


The Wolf Queen

by That_Ghost_Kristoff



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Established Relationship, F/M, Female Robb, Half-Sibling Incest, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, Red Wedding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-25
Updated: 2014-07-17
Packaged: 2018-01-27 20:26:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 42,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1721513
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/That_Ghost_Kristoff/pseuds/That_Ghost_Kristoff
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They aren't Lannisters, they aren't Targaryens. Jon and Robyn are Starks, and they should have known better.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sunshine_and_Snow](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sunshine_and_Snow/gifts).



> The only way to make this work means that the background behind Robb's (or Robyn's, whatever) birth is pretty similar to another genderswap called Children of Ice and Snow. But seeing how this is a birthday present for her, that doesn't really matter. The similarities also end there.
> 
> So, basically, that means Ned told Cat Jon was Lyanna's, Cat had a series of pregnancies gone wrong, and by the time Arya was born as the third girl, the two of the them decided Robert likes wars too much not to have an heir and legitimized Jon. Two years later they had Bran, but they weren't just going to take that legitimacy away, which puts Jon as Jon Stark, heir of Winterfell, and Robb as the oldest daughter. 
> 
> Also, unfortunately, one of the direwolves is going to have to be cut from this. My favorite direwolf to be specific, but certain adjustments had to be made.
> 
> Oh, and faceclaim as mandatory per genderswap apparently is Eleanor Tomlinson. 
> 
> Last thing: I write Joffrey I guess slightly differently than I've noticed a lot of people do. If you want an explanation, which I guess is a spoiler, it's in the end notes.

Winter is coming, and Jon enters her room her late at night with a young direwolf white of fur and with eyes more red than her hair. “I know, we returned later than you expected,” he says, and places the little thing on her lap. “We found a litter of five by their dead mother and Bran looked about to cry, so I convinced Father to spare them. He said he’d never seen them this far south of the Wall.”

He’s soft, this direwolf, and rubs himself against her palm like a cat when she pets him. Jon feels cold as Robb tucks herself against his side. “Litter of five?” she repeats. “So, who is unlucky enough to go without a direwolf, you or Rickon?”

When he says nothing, that’s answer enough. Tomorrow she can yell at him for his selflessness, she decides, and kisses him on the cheek. “Thank you, Jon,” she says, sincere, “but we share everything anyway. I doubt it would be too difficult to share a direwolf too. Why isn’t he making any noise?”

With a slight shrug, her brother answers, “He’s been like this since we found him. Really, Robb, I don’t mind—” She raises an eyebrow and he sighs. “All right. Well, he still needs a name.”

The direwolf looks up at her with large red eyes, and rubs against her palm again. Winter is coming, and he’s as pure as snow, small and quiet. Everything she can think of seems terribly uncreative. “You decide, Jon. We are to share, after all.”

“Ghost,” he says after a moment, and lays his head on top of hers. His fingers rest light against her hip, cold through her nightclothes, but they don’t bother with the excuse for warmth anymore. “He’s white and soundless. It seems appropriate. What do you think?”

“I like it,” she says, and kisses him. “Stay with me tonight.”

By now, one of them slipping into the other’s room is an old routine. Mother and Father don’t know, of course, but they never grew out of the childish habit. Most of Robb’s life was spent as Jon’s shadow—she learned how to fight with him, took their lessons together, got into more mischief together than anyone in Winterfell knew what to do with, for who could say no to the two eldest Starks? Where one went, the other was never far behind. They aren’t the Targaryens, they should know better, but after growing up so tightly knit together, Robb thinks it rather inevitable that she eventually kissed him in the godswood at fourteen.

So they’re Starks, and they should know better, but Jon brought her a direwolf today, and when she leans to blow out the bedside candle, he’s already reaching over to get an arm around her waist. Perhaps they’re fools, but all songs are about fools in love.

 

 

When they discover Jon Arryn has died, Robb is with Theon and Sansa in her room escaping the rain while Jon is speaking to Father about “possibilities.” Her friend won’t meet her eyes, and her sister’s smiling enough to turn grey skies sunny when she says, “Prince Joffrey isn’t promised to anyone. Do you think Father and the King will exchange a match for me?”

For most of her life, Sansa’s dreamed of a prince or knight on horseback come to marry her and hasn’t kept it a secret. Robb might not disown all things womanly like Arya, but she hasn’t taught Ghost to eat out of the palm of her hand to respect proper etiquette either. “I don’t think so, Sansa,” Theon says, and still refuses to so much as cast a glance in Robb’s direction. For a quite some time now, she’s wondered if he’s pieced together what’s happened between her and Jon. “You’re only the second daughter, and ‘Lady Robyn’ is still younger than him.”

Sansa’s shoulders fall. “But you don’t even _want_ to,” she says with his mouth twisted down into a scowl. “How is that fair?”

“We’re daughters,” Robb answers, because this is something she’s learned herself by now after so many fights with Mother over marriage. The most recent proposal came from Mace Tyrell of High Garden for his son Loras, but her parents are refusing any less than the oldest in return for her. “It’s never fair.”

Of course, her sister doesn’t understand what she means, or at least not yet, and Robb hopes she never has to. Ghost bats his head silently against her side, and Theon comments that the rain is letting up. During the Greyjoy Rebellion, he was taken away from his home, too. The world isn’t particularly fair to sons, either.

Maybe it’s just that the world isn’t fair to anyone, but the thought’s too depressing for her to choose to believe that.

 

 

They knew both of them would have to get married one day, him as heir and she as the eldest daughter. When they began their relationship, Robb told herself she was ready for it to end, but she quickly discovers as the very real possibility looms clothes that she was woefully mistaken.

“Once everyone arrives, we won’t have much time together,” Jon says, joining her in the godswood once their lessons are done and everyone has gone off to pursue their own interests, leaving them easily unaccounted for. It’s late, and the sky is purple and their shadows long. Ghosts acts as guard, ears twitching at every sound.

As she wraps her arms around herself, she says, “If it does happen, most likely I’ll be leaving for King’s Landing when they do. We can find time.”

During most of their lives, Robb was always just one step behind him, tumbling over the skirts of her dresses, collecting scars and bruises in the manner other little girls had collected dolls. But she was never as wild as Arya, who’s closer to a stable boy than a lady, and never the dreamer that Sansa was, despite her love of stories and songs. Apparently, though, she was never quite realistic enough to imagine endings.

To her credit, neither was Jon, it seems. “I love you,” he tells her, says it so simply. “Regardless of what happens.”

There is, unfortunately, nothing simple about this. By now, both of them have heard enough about this Prince Joffrey to know he isn’t a good person, to put it in terms Mother would consider acceptable. Robb doesn’t want to be Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. She wants to be Lady of Winterfell, but she knows that’s not possible. In the end, she doesn’t have much choice where she goes if the call for her hand if made by the King, and it doesn’t matter who it is she loves.

Even so, she answers, “I love you, too,” because it’s true, and the sky turns the color of a bruise as the sun dips below the horizon.

 

 

“So you’re going to King’s Landing, Robb?”

It’s Arya, and she stands in the doorway without knocking, Nymeria at her heels. Ghost is with Jon, out on the hunt, who reluctantly went on with Father, Theon, and the King’s company. “I was hoping you hadn’t heard that,” Robb says with a sigh, and her sister walks in uninvited, joining her on the window ledge. “Yes, whether Father agrees to become Hand or not, I leave with the Queen within the fortnight everyone returns.”

“But you’re only just fifteen!” Arya says, voice already climbing, and Robb just wants to curl further up into herself than she already has. “They can’t take you away!”

Except they can, because many people are married by this age. She’d already bled for the first time earlier this year, and she knows enough about these sorts of things that she’s little more than an involuntary political move right now. “I’ll be all right, Arya,” she lies with a smile, because she’s very good at pretending to be brave. “And in a few months’ time, you’ll be coming down to King’s Landing to visit me for the wedding.”

Arya looks so disgusted it’s actually admirable. “I don’t want you to get married to some stupid prince from the south,” she says. “You promised to teach me use a sword like you. Who’s going to let a princess use a sword?”

If she ruled a kingdom, Robb thinks, she would let women fight the same as the men so Mother wouldn’t be so disapproving of the lessons she received as an extension of Jon as a children and Arya could learn if she wanted. And one day she _will_ rule a kingdom, but she doubts very much her husband will agree. “I’m to be Queen, Arya,” she answers. “I can do whatever I want.”

This, of course, is a lie, too, and Arya seems no less sated by it. “‘Too much color,’” she says, repeating the Queen’s words. “The Riverlands are still north for her.”

In the light of her candle, Robb’s hair is much redder than normal in the reflection of the window with her eyes drained to the color of ice and her skin much too pale. She wants Jon to return, and Father and Theon, and—

The scream rings out across the courtyard, followed by the howl of a wolf. Then Nymeria howls, along with two others down at hall, and Arya’s suddenly gripping Robb’s hand hard enough her nails leave indents in her skin.

 

 

By the time Father tells her of the proposal himself, Bran has already fallen, Mother shut herself away with him, and Robb has spent the past four days treating younger siblings the way a parent would. She hasn’t slept much, either, and she thinks it’s somewhat remarkable she keeps herself calm. “I understand,” she says when he apologizes for not telling her sooner. “You didn’t want to see me upset.”

While Sansa hasn’t kept it a secret she hopes to live the life of a song, Robb similarly hasn’t kept it a secret she wishes to stay in the North. Not Winterfell necessarily, but this land is her home and she hadn’t wanted to be taken away. Of course he didn’t want to see her upset. “I didn’t,” he says with a sigh, and puts a hand on her shoulder, “but I suppose keeping it from you hadn’t helped.”

“To be fair, you hadn’t expected Bran to fall.”

He nods, clearly as exhausted as she is, and puts an arm around her shoulders. “Where we’re going is a dangerous place, Robb,” he tells her, “though it won’t look it. You’re a smart girl, what you learned from your brother’s lessons will show you that soon enough. I’m going to protect you, but you’re going to be alone much more often than your sisters. I need you to protect yourself, too.”

Something else is going on, she can see that plainly enough. Father wouldn’t leave with Bran injured just because the King asked him to if there weren’t. “I understand,” she says again, and means it. Tension leaves his shoulders.

“Good,” he says, and kisses the side of her head. “Now go find your brother and Theon. It’s been long enough that they’ll be scouring Winterfell for you.”

Over the past few weeks, Jon and Theon have been getting along better than Robb had ever seen before in what seems to be a mutual hatred towards Prince Joffrey. “Of course, Father,” she says, and forces herself to smile before leaving.

Ghost finds her as she turns the corner, and she drops to her knees to give her wolf a hug, burying her face in his soft fur. He smells of ice and cold, of the godswood and all the things that make up the home she’s to leave behind.

 

 

They’re supposed to be outside in the courtyard, but instead she and Jon stand in her room for a last few moments alone. “We’ll see each other in a few months,” he says. “Next time we do, you won’t be wearing these.”

Her dress is a simple grey, meant for travel, and the fabric is too dense for the warmth of King’s Landing. It’s the cloak he’s referring to, though, which is dark blue with white fur and newly sewn. A waste of resources, all things considered. “Next time you see me, I’ll be in a wedding dress,” she says, which isn’t strictly speaking true, but close enough.

Since she found out from the Queen, she keeps wishing this were some terrible dream she could wake from. Regardless of what she wants, though, she is here, and this is real, and she’s to be made a princess and a queen when she was never taught to be either. To protect herself, and to keep her marriage from being completely awful, she’ll have to appear interested and find a way to get him interested in return, which is something else she was never taught to do. Jon’s the only one she’s ever loved, and there was nothing to learn about him because they learned everything together.

Once they leave this room, everything they have is over. With the castle so filled with people these past few weeks, everyone has had to fit in everyone else’s room, and they had no time together. It was stupid to begin with, and would be probably the most dishonorable thing to happen to the Stark name if anyone had discovered it, but they went and did it anyway. Robb hadn’t expected heartbreak to hurt like this.

“Just promise me one thing,” Jon says and leans forward so their foreheads touch. “Don’t let the Queen dress you in red and gold for the wedding.”

“I won’t let them change me,” she says. “I swear. I’m Robyn of House Stark, no matter what name or title they give me.”

Then he kisses her once, and goes no further. Instead they stay there for another moment, and listen to each other breathe.

 

 

Leaving her family is painful enough, and leaving Jon in particular hurts worst of all, but Robb knows enough about politics and marriage that she reaches out to Joffrey before he can come to her.

“It’s terribly boring here,” she says when she finds him, and it’s true enough, but she quickly lies, “Father said I’m not to go for a walk without guard, but none of the men are much in the way of conversation. I think you must be suitable enough protection, though, if you would like to join me, Prince Joffrey.”

Growing up with boys proved to her that appealing to their pride is the surest way to convince them to do anything. The only person it never worked on was Jon, a leftover aspect of his personality from when he was still named Snow. Clearly it works well enough on Prince Joffrey, too, because he’s quick to say, “Of course, My Lady,” and offers her his arm.

He’s shorter than both Jon and Theon, and he and Robb stand eye to eye. “Oh, please, My Prince,” she says, and smiles the best she can, “we’re to be married within the next four months, according to your mother—there’s no need for formalities. Robyn will do, in privacy at the very least.”

She doesn’t want him to call her Robyn, but they really _are_ to be husband and wife, and she’s doing what she thinks is right. And though he’s clearly uncomfortable with it, she’s put him in a very specific position just as she planned, so he answers, “Then you may call me Joffrey...Robyn.”

Even Robyn sounds so tense and formal, but she’s already decided “Robb” is a name left for Winterfell. “We’re very fortunate, you know, Joffrey,” she says, and allows him to lead her along the path of the river. “Most betrothed don’t have a chance to speak until the day of their wedding, but we have several months to get to know each other.”

“Most betrothed aren’t a prince and the daughter of the Hand of the King.”

“No, I suppose not.” It’s been a week now since they left, which places them just south of the border into the Riverlands, and already it’s too hot for her furs. It doesn’t feel much like winter is coming now, and she knows King’s Landing will be even warmer.

She adds nothing else, and neither do he, and they walk the next half hour in silence.

 

 

Over the course of their journey, Robb instigates so many walks eventually Joffrey begins searching her out as well, perhaps at his mother’s bidding, though she can’t be sure. Through some careful prodding conversation, she gradually discovers his interests while he asks about none of hers, and doesn’t like what she finds. He certainly has a cruel streak inside of him, but she has several months where she can prepare a defense against that. Unfortunately, she has a feeling she doesn’t like what that will take.

As usual, their walk today brings them along the riverside. “Will you show me around the Red Keep when we arrive, Joffrey?” she asks finally, considerably later than she probably should have. “I heard the old dragon skulls are still hidden away in there.”

“They’re in the dungeons,” he tells her, and despite her greatest efforts, she is genuinely interested in seeing those. “I can show you the tombs of the past Targaryens, too. I know the stories of how all of them died.”

“Oh, I know some,” she says, which is true. “I know the death of Rhaenyra Targaryen’s at Dragonstone, among others, but hers I find the most interesting. I wouldn’t mind learning more, since Father never told me much about the later Targaryens. What happened to his father and brother in the throne room still makes him sad, I think.”

Most of this is largely untrue, but she’s already decided her greatest shield will be to build up what appears to be a common interest. She’s known this boy for less than two months and already thinks he’ll be a terrible husband, and even worse king. “I know what happened,” he says, as she expected. “I can tell you, if you’d like. The Mad King—”

He breaks off at the sound of what’s clearly two sticks hitting against one another, a sound she’s familiar with from childhood. Arya, she thinks, because there aren’t many young people with them. “Let’s go the other way, my love,” she says with a now well practiced smile. “Surely, it’s better to—”

“Don’t worry, Robyn,” he says, and leads her through the bushes. “You’re safe with me.”

Arya’s there, as Robb thought she would be, practicing swordplay with the butcher’s boy while Sansa weaves a flower crown on the riverbank, Lady and Nymeria keeping watch. “Oh, Prince Joffrey!” Sansa says when she sees them approach, causing Arya to twist around and the boy to land a hit.

“Ow!”

There’s a moment, then, where Joffrey tenses, and a hundred terrible possibilities fly through Robb’s mind, so she does the only thing she can think of and says, “Arya, not three weeks away from home and already teaching yourself swordplay. What would Mother say? Both of you, lower your sticks, your grips are all wrong to begin with.”

Joffrey’s face goes from that princely arrogance he displayed when he thought he had the chance to prove himself to deep confusion. With a frown, Arya says, “That’s what Theon showed me.”

“I tried to tell her to never listen to anything Theon says unless it has to do with archery,” Sansa says, still off to the side, “but she insisted. Why did you even ask him to begin with?”

“I couldn’t find Jon!”

Until now, Robb’s done a very good job convincing everyone she’s perfectly ladylike, but this might have ruined everything. And explaining how close she is with Jon, even if she leaves out the more important details, is something she’d rather avoid, but unfortunately Joffrey asks, “How did _you_ know the grip was wrong?”

Though it’s a lie, and both her sisters know it, she answers, “I learned the principles of swordplay when I was younger, so I might not be able to hold a sword myself, but I can recognize when something is right or wrong. I watched my brother’s lessons.” Arya looks as though she wants to say something, but Sansa sends her a look that quiets her. “Walk with me somewhere else, Prince Joffrey,” she continues. “We can leave these children to their sticks and bruises. You promised me a story.”

Once that was her, except it was practice sword or real swords instead of sticks, but she left that behind in Winterfell, too. Though clearly uncomfortable with the whole situation, Joffrey once again laces his arm with hers like a proper lord to his lady love, and they walk back together to camp.

 

 

Within a week of her time in King’s Landing, the Queen has three new dresses made from her own personal dressmaker, and it feels less of a kind gesture and more of a calculating one. “Red isn’t my color,” Robb says when the man suggests it. “It doesn’t go well with my hair. Something will blue will bring out the color of my eyes, though, I find.”

The dressmaker drapes her in blues and greys and silvers for her eyes, greens and browns and blacks for her hair. Whatever the Queen’s move is, the man must not know it, because he embroiders the trims of her waist and shoulders with direwolves in motion. As he leaves, he says he already has ideas for the one for her wedding. “That sounds lovely,” she says as she leads him out, and hopes she hasn’t made some terrible mistake.

 

 

The first time Father sees her in one of her new dresses, her sisters, Jory, and Septa Mordane are all there, too. “You look _beautiful_ , Robb,” Sansa says, breakfast forgotten as she runs over. Both Lady and Nymeria perk their heads up at the sudden movement. “The Queen did this for you?”

Septa Mordane smiles, Arya just rolls her eyes, and Father watches her warily. “She let you choose the color?” he asks.

“She didn’t explicitly say not to,” she answers with a smile, tucking her skirt underneath her as she takes a seat. “The dressmaker and I just decided red isn’t my color.”

As of now, only one is finished, though the others will come within the week. She supposes he must have done the hard one first, as this has the embroidery. “It’s so fancy,” Arya says, then notices the shoulders and waist. “Is that Ghost?”

At that, Father actually startles a little, and she truly does feel bad for worrying him over something as silly as a dress choice, but she promised Jon. “Just a generic wolf,” she says, “though I’d like to think it is.”

“Does the Queen know about this?” Father says, and she nods. “ _Robyn._ ”

Surprised, she looks over at him, as does everyone else, because it’s not as though her family ever calls her by her full name. “It’s perfectly fine, Father,” she says. “I already thanked her for the gift and everything. I even told her I requested her split sleeves for one of the dresses because they looked so wonderful on her.”

“And the color?”

“Happened not to come up in conversation, Father.”

Never in her life had Robb thought she’d see a dress used a weapon, or use one herself in return. She was going to have to use politics at some point in her life, that was inevitable, but she just wishes it could be a lord’s, which are much more straightforward than a lady’s. Jon and Theon get swordplay and archery and strategy. They can make choices that have a chance to lead to better futures.

She can choose the color of her dress and the style of her hair, and all it determines is how her future husband treats her.

 

 

Joffrey shows her the tombs of the Targaryens, and tells her the stories of every one she didn’t already know, and more than once she “excitedly” interjects with her own knowledge. He yanks her along rather than guides her, leaves bruises on her arms and hands.

After, he takes her into the dungeons to show her the dragon skulls. “I know how many people died because of them,” she says, looking up at the largest, big enough that the two of them could easily step inside its mouth if they wanted, “but I would love to see a real, live dragon.”

“Can you imagine riding one?” he says. “No army stood a chance. Whole castles fell. No one would be fool enough to oppose me.”

“Oppose _us_ ,” she corrects. “The women Targaryens rode dragons too, and when you’re King, I’m to be your Queen. Anyone who opposes you opposes me, too.”

It’s a dawning realization, though why it comes to her during a talk of dragons she doesn’t know. Something _is_ going on, she was right about that, she can see it just from her father’s mannerisms, and for all she knows it will lead to war. What if the North rebels, or the Vale or Riverlands, and she’s torn between her family and her husband? She knows who she would want to choose. She also knows choosing that would get them all killed anyway.

He’s to be her husband, and she his wife, the King and Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, and one day they’re going to have a child. And there’re no dragon or wolf here to save her from that.

 

 

Robb doesn’t know who sent the invitations for her wedding, but Joffrey becomes more sullen in the days after. And the more he starts the pull away, which on normal occasions she would like but at the moment she _needs_ him to like her, the more pleased seems the Queen, so she decides do something that could possibly have very terrible consequences.

When Robb knocks on Joffrey’s door late that night, she’s relieved to find he has yet to change into his night clothes, but at least he’s alone. “I’ve always wanted to see the sea after dark,” she tells him after he asks what she’s doing here, “but Father would never allow it, and it’s not as though it’s any good for a woman to walk alone. Would you like to come with me?” He’s clearly hesitating, so she adds, “Our wedding is in a month’s time. The Red Keep will be so full both before and after that we’ll hardly get any time alone at all. Please come with me, my love?”

Before coming, she searched out the fastest route to the sea without encountering any guards, so she is entirely prepared. It takes some more wheedling, and a lot of appealing to his belief in his own superiority, but eventually he does agree. “Your hair is down,” he says once they’ve snuck out, an act that reminds her unpleasantly of her time with Jon. “I’ve never seen your hair down before.”

Women in King’s Landing usually have theirs up in a ridiculous style Sansa has adopted, or at least held up in some way, but Robb usually keeps it the single braid draped over her shoulder as Mother often wore it. “Well, this isn’t decent, if you want to talk etiquette,” she says, “but the way I see it, soon that won’t matter much between us. You know, Joffrey, I’d never seen the sea before until I came here.”

“Really?”

“I’d never even been to the Riverlands or the Vale,” she answers. “Mother and Father kept me in the North, like all my siblings. Theon, our ward—”

“I thought he was your hostage.”

“Oh, we never treated him like that.”

He looks put out at that, which she is isn’t surprised by. Anyone like him needs to be at least a little disturbed by the idea of kindness. “Hostages in King’s Landing are treated as hostages, as they should be.”

With an incredibly indecent shrug, she says, “I understand that. If he were older he would be, but he was just eight at the time, not much older than myself. Why fault a child for the sins of his father? And the Iron Islands are not a good place. To be honest, I think he was better in Winterfell.”

Right then, they reach the sea, and Theon had told her about how the water looks at night so often that she truly had wanted to see it. “It’s beautiful,” she adds, and for once in what feels like a long time, her smile is real. “Thank you, Joffrey.”

“Anything for my lady,” he says, which should sound nice but instead just reminds her that under her sleeve, she has a bruise from him gripping at his arm too tightly already. She’s already trying to decided how much of that she needs to allow, and again wishes she were born a lord instead of a lady. Bleeding on a battlefield sounds much more honest than bleeding in the home.

 

 

For what feels like incredibly suspicious reasons, Mother arrives a whole night earlier than expected. Theon doesn’t come either, nor Rickon, remaining in Winterfell to help with Bran, and they’re to leave within two days after the wedding because it isn’t good for Jon to be gone that long. And Theon may not be here, which is disappointing, but Jon is.

“You look beautiful,” he starts to say after she’s gotten him into the privacy of her room, but impulse takes her over, and she pulls him into a kiss.

Despite saying they’re never to do this again, he’s very quick to reciprocate. Ghost rubs himself against her side. “What was that for?” he asks once they’ve finally separated, but keeps his forehead to hers.

“I missed you,” she answers as if it were that simple, when it’s so much more than that. She thought of him every day, because when wolves love, they love for life, and no lion will change her skin. “And I’m not married yet, now am I?”

When he laughs, the sound is more sad than anything else, and she knows the feeling. “I love you,” he says, and pulls her closer, kissing her again. “Robb, I love you—”

It’s only because she’s well practiced at pretending now that she manages not to cry when she says, “I know, I love you, Jon. No matter what he says at that wedding, just remember I’ve only ever loved you.”

If they kiss too much, someone will notice, so she slips her arms around him, and buries her face into his shoulder instead. He repeats, “I love you,” three more times, and presses kisses to her neck between each one. It isn’t long until Arya bangs on the door, calling for Jon and yelling at Robb for stealing him, and they’re forced to move.

She opens the door, and her sister comes running inside, Sansa not far behind, both throwing themselves at their brother. Robb doesn’t look at him, and he doesn’t look at her, and the air of finality is so heavy it nearly breaks her.  

 

 

Her wedding dress is not red and gold, as she promised Jon, but a pure white with its only decoration lace, her hair in a braid entwined with blue roses. The fabric of the Baratheon-Lannister cloak Joffrey wraps around her shoulders is light, and until then, she is possibly the simplest royal bride King’s Landing has ever seen.

Regardless, her betrothed is actually smiling, whether false like hers or not, when the septon twists the cloth around their joined hands. “Let it be known,” the man says, “that Robyn of Houses Tully and Stark, and Joffrey of Houses Lannister and Baratheon, are one heart—” He undoes the cloth. “—and flesh. One soul. Cursed be he who would seek to tear them asunder.”

“With this kiss,” Joffrey says when they turn to the crowd, “I pledge my love to my wife, from this day until my last day.”

Then he kisses her, as he kissed her that night by the sea, and the audience to their declaration of love claps. When she looks at Jon in the crowd, he smiles, and looks as though he could cry. And like that, she is Robyn of Houses Stark and Baratheon, Princess of the Seven Kingdoms, and future Queen.

 

 

With Jon, their love might have been wrong, but it was innocent, and she’s as much a virgin as her husband is.

“Stop,” she says, because it hurts. “Wait.”

Joffrey does neither, and rather seems to enjoy her tears.

 

 

“What’s being a princess like?” Arya asks as they wait for Syrio Forel. Robyn doesn’t practice (often), but she likes to sit and watch when she has the time.

If it were Father, she would lie. If it were anyone else, she would lie, except perhaps Sansa, but this is Arya, and she can’t. “Horrible,” she answers, and picks at her nails. “Arya, you’ll have to marry some day. It’s inevitable. If I can, I’ll help, because you should marry no less than someone you love, or at that very least like.”

Arya furrows her brow. “Robb, what’s wrong?” she says, and when Robyn doesn’t answer right away, she repeats, “What’s wrong?”

For once Robyn is lucky, and Syrio enters, because she hadn’t wanted to answer. There are many things wrong, but this is the foremost issue:

She isn’t Robb anymore, hasn’t been for a long time, and there a few things worse than feeling your identity shift.

 

 

Though Joffrey is stronger, Robyn is quicker, and the first time he tries to strike her, she catches him by the wrist before he can. “Think long and hard about what you plan to do, _husband_ ,” she says, and uses the tension of the wall and her inability to back up further as a way to add to her resistance instead of weaken it. “You might be the Prince, but I’m the Princess, and you pledged yourself to me until the end of your days in _public._ Imagine people’s reaction to a mark on my face, my love.”

There’s a moment where she thinks she only angered him further, but in the end he pulls his wrist from her grasp and lowers her hand. She’s allowed him to hurt her, has started collected bruises again places people can’t see, but she set her limits and intends to stay with them. Wolves don’t yield, not to stags, not to lions, and he’s just some lion cub who thinks he’s larger than he is. She doesn’t know what convinced him, but something did, and that’s what matters.

“You’re a woman,” he says, as if that’s supposed to be some sort of insult when she’s learned that femininity is just as dangerous as masculinity. “If I say—”

“It doesn’t matter what you say, it doesn’t matter what I say,” she tells him. “Out there, where everyone can see us, it’s appearances that matter when you’re still a prince if one day you want your people to accept you as their king. And in here, between you and me, it’s love that matters. Was I wrong in thinking you love me, Joffrey?”

As she says this, she’s already unlacing his breeches, hoping it comes across as an apology rather than a distraction. Hurting her makes him happy, to put it in the least indecent terms, and the moment she touches him, he’s kissing her.

Outside, sunset sinks the dusk, and the sky turns the color of the blemishes on her skin.

 

 

Queen Cersei takes her by the arm one day around the gardens, and nods to every spy she has. For her own protection, Father explain to her what Lord Baelish explained to him. Since then, she’s been able to learn on her own who belongs to the Queen, at the very least.

“Have you ever been outside the walls of the Red Keep, Robyn?” she asks, as they slip around a fountain. “No, of course you haven’t, I would know. Do you know why?”

“No, Your Grace.” Robyn hadn’t realized there was the reason.

To her confusion, the woman explains, “Someone has started a nickname for you, something cute that spread much too fast for the commoners who normally don’t care much for princesses, you see. ‘Little Wolf.’ For some reason, a member of the Small Council—I don’t know which, your father, I presume—seems to take this as some sort of insult showing rising tension with the North. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

Again, Robyn answers, “No, Your Grace. If I can speak plainly, Your Grace, no one ever tells me anything.” This is a test, the way the dress was, and to be perfectly honest, she does have some inkling this is true, though whether or not the public is calling her the Little Wolf is still up to debate, considering Sansa is already called little dove or little bird. Father has been growing more distant, more anxious.

With an almost self-deprecating smile Robyn’s never seen before, the Queen says, “I’m Queen of the Seven Kingdoms, mother of the future King, and daughter of Tywin Lannister, Lord of Casterly Rock. I’m the most powerful woman in Westeros, Robyn, and no one tells me anything either. So here’s some advice for you, for when you’re Queen: if there’s something you want to learn, do it yourself. No man will do it for you.”

Perhaps this is just her now always anticipating threats, but she is relatively certain she was just told to go behind her Father’s back, which she doesn’t plan to do, disguised as womanly wisdom. Even so, she lies, “I…understand, Your Grace. And if I learn anything…?”

“You’re going to need friends other than your sisters,” the Queen says. “There’s no one better than me.”

Arguably anyone is better than her, but Robyn holds her tongue and instead agrees, because that’s what foolish girls do.

 

 

When she walks with Sansa or Arya, no one dare comes near them, afraid to approach a direwolf. It’s late afternoon now, her husband occupied, and Robyn takes her sister for a stroll along the water, Lady at their side. “Do you ever miss Ghost?” Sansa asks, stroking her wolf behind her ear. “I know Jon wanted you to bring him.”

Before they left, Father decided three wolves on the road would make the others nervous, which Robyn saw enough with just two. She wonders what Joffrey would have done with him, or worse yet, the Queen. “Yes,” she answers anything, because she’s tired of lying. “As acting Lord of Winterfell, though, I think Jon needs him more than I do.”

Sansa sighs. “If only there had been six.”

Perhaps, but it seems somewhat inevitable there were only five. Before this, she and Jon shared everything. “Well, next time we go to Winterfell, I’ll be able to see him again,” she says, and it already feels as though she’ll never see home again.

 

 

If there’s one thing she hates most about Joffrey, it’s that sometimes, he's almost kind.

It’s sunset now, and the duties of princes and princesses are over for the day, and at some point during the afternoon he realized that unlike him, she doesn’t have a crown at the ready in case something happens to the King. They’re on the bed, a board with parchment on top in front of them, and neither can draw, but together they make a valiant effort. “Mine is gold,” he says when she argues against a band of it. “Kings and Queens traditionally have the same.”

Shaking her head, she tells him, “My hair will look _awful_ with a gold band. Besides, gold’s so heavy. Not that I’m adverse to gold. Queens’ crowns usually have some sort of adornment, though. Silver band with gold adornment?”

This isn’t the sort of thing she ever imagined Joffrey to want to take part in, but he does have the occasional moment where he catches her by surprise. “My mother’s doesn’t circle her head entirely,” he says, which she’s noticed.

“Then mine won’t either,” she says, and tries to make a half-circle, but fails horrible. When he tries to fix it, it doesn’t look much better. “How about leaves, like the pillars in the throne room? Only gold, of course, instead of green.”

They try to sketch that, too, but they all come out as very bad triangles. “Well,” Joffrey says in defeat. “That should be simple enough to explain without a picture.”

Sansa could have drawn it easily, made it look real, but Robyn likes to keep her away from anything involving Joffrey or the Queen. Though Arya received an explanation, Robyn never had the opportunity to give the same to their sister. “We’ll do that first thing tomorrow.”

They crumble the paper so no one will ever see it, and put the board away. She wonders what the Queen will think when she discovers the new crown isn’t gold.

 

 

On the day Father awakens after his stab to the leg, Robyn’s finally told what’s happening. “Your Aunt Lysa sent a raven telling your mother the Lannisters had poisoned Jon Arryn, Robb,” he tells her, taking her hand in his. There are bruises down her body and scrapes because she might be quicker, but Joffrey is stronger, and there’s not much she can do once he has her on her back on the floor. She shouldn’t have yelled at him after he yelled first at her, but it takes two to make a child, so it’s not her fault alone. “A man attacked your brother with a knife later identified as Lord Tyrion’s. Bran’s fall was no accident.”

“Is that why you came here?” she asks, and tries not to think about how she’s never been outside the castle walls, so what’s the chance of her ever going to home to see Bran? “To find why they poisoned him?”

Nodding, Father answers, “Every lead I have goes nowhere. Maester Pycelle gave me the book Jon had the night he died. It’s in the desk drawer, if you want a look at it.”

The Queen told her to go behind her father’s back for information, but here she is, getting it directly from him, because they’re Starks, and family is everything. She removes the book, some impossibly heavy thing leather bound, and returns to her spot next to him. “Why would anyone want to read this?”

“It gives a detailed list of every member of every House stretching back for generations,” he says. “Nothing was marked. All I have is a book, a crippled son, and a knife through the leg. I looked at the Lannisters. There’s no one important listed past Lord Tyrion.”

“That’s because not all Lannisters are of House Lannister,” she says, and starts flipping through the pages. “Joffrey, Tommen, and Myrcella—they’re all called ‘of House Baratheon,’ but they’re not. Think about my wedding, Father. ‘Joffrey of Houses Lannister and Baratheon.’”

Of course Father wouldn’t think of this, and of course never this quickly. He spends his days alone, or surrounded by Small Council members, or King Robert. She spends hers with Joffrey, has callously called him a lion in her head rather than a stag more times than she can count, and she doubts her father ever kissed his sister the way she kissed Jon. “‘Lord Orys Baratheon, black of hair,’” she reads. “‘Jocelyn Baratheon, black of hair, Lyonel Baratheon, black of hair, Steffon Baratheon, black of hair, Robert Baratheon, black of hair, Joffrey Baratheon, golden haired.’”

When she shuts the book, and looks over, Father is staring at her wide eyed. “How did you—”

“He looks like Ser Jaime sometimes,” she says, which is true enough, and she can’t very well tell him she can recognize what hiding a relationship with a sibling looks like. The Queen and Ser Jaime are not nearly as discreet about their little glances as they think. “Why else would someone look at this book, and then be poisoned soon after? Tommen and Myrcella are sweet children. If the gods flip a coin, they got two out three.”

Father pulls himself up so he’s sitting, back resting against the headboard, and doesn’t hide his wince very well. “I’m sorry you were ever put in this position,” he says, and she understands, because if it were Sansa in her place, her sister wouldn’t be married yet. They could have avoided the extra complication. “Your mother and I were talking about marrying you to Theon before the King came, keep you in Winterfell.”

While staying so close to Jon would have been painful, she would have been wed to her best friend. She actually wishes she didn’t know that. “You can’t refuse the King,” she answers. “I knew it was going to happen the moment I heard they were coming. You’re going to tell him, aren’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Is that enough to annul the marriage?”

To her disappointment, Father just sighs, a sound that’s more of a groan from his pain. “I don’t know,” he says. “I’ve never seen this before. But, Robb, if something goes wrong, I want you to take your sisters and go back to Winterfell.”

“No one will allow that.” By now, she knows this with absolute certainty.

Apparently, for once, that doesn’t matter, because he says, “They’ve killed Jon Arryn, they crippled Bran. I won’t have them getting my daughters, too.”

Little Wolf, she thinks. Even the young ones have claws. “I promise,” she tells him, and decides she needs a plan where no one will follow her.

Hopefully it won’t come to that.

 

 

She’s sitting in one Arya’s lesson with Syrio when it comes to that. The King returned injured, and the moment the knights appear, Robyn knows she’ll need that crown of hers. “My father wouldn’t send Lannister guards, or you, Ser Meryn,” she says, getting off the ledge she’d been sitting on. If they’re here, then the King is dead, and something happened to Father. She knows perfectly well what he planned to do. “Turn around, Sers, and tell your Lady if she wants me, she can come find me herself.”

Arya’s hand slips into hers without directive. Ser Meryn says, “The King sent—” but she just shakes her head because they aren’t getting her sister if she has anything to say about it.

“And the Queen is telling you she’s delivering Lady Arya back to her room,” she says. “I know my castle, I need no armed escort, so I suggest you don’t try to follow or attack us or my husband will hear of how you disobeyed a command from your Queen. Which of you is smart enough to protect me if your fellow men are fools?”

There’s silence as she leads her sister backwards from the room, and midway down the hall, they break into a run because the sound of metal against metal, and metal against wood is unmistakable. “I need to get Sansa,” she says, pulling Arya out of sight the moment she can. “It might take a while. Run, keep yourself safe.”

“How will you find me again?”

“You’ll be the one to find me. It might be some time. Find me when the bells toll,” Robyn answers, and kisses the top of her head. “Stay safe. Take Nymeria and go.”

It’s hard, letting her sister leave when she can’t be there to protect her, but Robyn runs towards the throne room, hoping again that she hasn’t made some terrible mistake.

 

 

Like anyone in her family, Robyn has honor instilled in her, but right now she cares more about keeping her sisters and father alive, so she forgoes the notion completely. “So the King dies,” she says, nearing her husband, who’s surrounded by his mother, Petyr Baelish, and Maester Pycelle, and several knights, “you ascend the throne, which means I ascend the Queen, and instead of being there to fulfill my duties when my father is captured, I stay uninformed of all of this? _Why?_ ”

Underneath Joffrey’s anger, that will mean nothing good for her later, there is a vein of slight discomfort. Considering his right to the throne was just denied and his wife is close to yelling at him, she’s not particularly surprised. “My mother said you couldn’t be found.”

“Is that so?” she answers, and looks to Cersei. “Her men seemed to find me easily enough. I was with Arya, as I always am at this time.”

“We already knew from Lord Baelish what your father was going to do,” Cersei says quickly. “I didn’t think it appropriate that—”

“Lady Cersei, I don’t care for your reasons, just that you used my absence to take my place at my husband’s side.” She looks back to Joffrey. “If we may speak alone?”

To her relief, Joffrey waves his hand and says, “Out, all of you,” which includes Cersei. Robyn hopes the woman’s lie moves at least some of his anger off of her.

Once they’re all gone, knights included, she takes her seat in the Queen’s chair, twisted towards him. “I want to know what happened, since I was misinformed,” she says. “Not from your mother, not the Small Council members, or knights, or my father. I want to hear it from you.”

So he tells her. It’s overdramatic, and many parts probably an exaggeration, but she can still gather what happened. When he finishes, he eyes her suspiciously, and adds, “And you knew of none of this?”

Back in Winterfell, she wasn’t particularly good at lying, but it comes to her easy now when she answers, “The moment I married you my father stopped telling me much of anything. In light of what happened, maybe our marriage made me more Baratheon than Stark. That said, I know my father. He would never do this unless a third party confirmed to him that you weren’t the true heir. Northerners like facts, and he was already injured.”

He watches her closely. “You seem very certain.”

“I’m his eldest daughter,” she says. “I know how everyone in my family thinks, regardless of what I’m apparently considered. What do you consider me, Joffrey? Am I still to be crowned with you, or am I to be held accountable for the sins of my father as your mother seems to mistake me?”

Even just saying it makes her feel dirty, but she told Arya to run and needs to get Sansa alone in order for her sister to do the same. Until then, she needs to be the dutiful Queen, and has one last way to get some form of control.

Joffrey says she’s still be crowned at his side, that she’s _his_ , and Robyn hopes this doesn’t take long at all.

 

 

Despite her greatest efforts, Robyn can never get Sansa alone, and she can’t make too much of a fuss about it without someone asking questions. But just because she’s rendered powerless in some areas doesn’t mean she can’t take charge in others.

She writes to Jon telling him to swear fealty, insisting she does it herself, and though the Cersei reads it, Robyn still manages to slip in a second piece of parchment under the first once she’s with the ravens. _Call the banners_ , she writes, _I’m not dead_ , and lets the raven fly. It’s a risk, but she doubts anyone is going to shoot it down and delay her brother learning of it from the source.

That night she fights with Joffrey, and allows it worsen. “ _Yes,_ I’ll admit it, I don’t want you to kill him, he’s my father,” she says, because he’s talking execution now that there are whispers of other people questioning his legitimacy. “But more than that, if you kill him, people will hate you. The _North_ will despise you. If you want your people to stop with their little rumors, have them want you to be here. Want _us_ to be here.”

“Fear is the only way to rule,” he says. “If I worry over the smallfolk loving me for every decision I make, there will be riots in the street within the fortnight.”

“And where is that written?” she answers. “The Mad King ruled through fear and his reward for it was a rebellion that overthrew the Targaryen dynasty and sword in his back. My youngest sister is missing, my father in a cell for treason. Don’t make me lose my husband, too.”

Selfishness is a double edged sword, but she’s learned to use to her advantage over the past year. He certainly isn’t relaxed, but he’s not ready to hurt her either. “No one would be questioning me if it weren’t for your father in the first place,” he says. “I need to tear out the problem by the root—”

“Do you know anything about wolves, Joffrey?” she asks. “There’s a saying, where I’m from—‘The lone wolf dies, but the pack survives.’ If you kill him, the North will never forgive you. Winter is coming, and you’ll have the one army in the Seven Kingdoms that knows how to endure it on your doorstep before the year is through.”

“What would you have me do? Release him back North?”

“Send him to the Night’s Watch with his brother. Jon is seventeen, he’ll swear fealty to us.”  Asking for Father to be sent home would be asking for too much at once, when her placement here is already delicate, and Arya has been gone for far too long on her own. And while Jon already wouldn’t, she just guaranteed his resistance, which Joffrey will learn about soon enough. “If you want to uproot a true problem before it becomes a problem, unseat Lord Baelish from the Small Council.”

Later, he can think about her threat, but for now she’s deflecting because they’ve already been on the topic too long. “Lord Baelish is not a problem,” Joffrey says. “If it weren’t for him, we wouldn’t have had forewarning about your father’s treason.”

Playing this one is even harder, but she tries to calm her racing heart when she says, “Yes, and how did he do that? By first swearing to my father he was going to help _him_ , presumably on the love he had for my mother or my father wouldn’t have believed him. Lord Baelish betrayed him in telling your mother. Whatever his good intentions, do you really want an oath breaker on the Small Council? A man obviously so quick to lie to his supposed ‘friends?’”

“He’s Master of Coin—”

“Then find a new one,” she says, makes it sound easy. “One that won’t put us so in debt, which I’ve heard he’s prone to do. And of course, he helped us. We couldn’t possibly make his dismissal look like some sort of punishment.”

Arya, she reminds herself. Arya, Sansa, Father. I’m doing this for them.

Joffrey says, “If you want to follow that logic, then every knight who helped fight against your father also needs to be dismissed.”

As she takes a seat on their bed, finally feeling relatively safe enough that she doesn’t need to prepare to run, she says, “Knights fight for who pays them. We, as the Crown, pay them, so they fight for us, and they’re loyal as long as that pay holds. Lord Baelish broke his word, he owns a brothel in town, indebts us to some Braavosi bank. What more are politics for a self-made lord than a means of personal gain? He swore you an oath, but he swore my father one, too.”

Before this, she thought nothing of Lord Baelish one way or the either, despite his connection to Mother, because she was too worried over everyone. “He helped us,” her husband insists. “He swore fealty to me in front of lords and nights. He’s not the one who committed treason, I can’t dismiss him as if he were.”

“Then we reward him for his great deeds,” she says, and smiles, because one of the better ways to make Joffrey agree to anything is to make him think that cruel streak lies in her, too. “I hear Harrenhal is lovely, unclaimed out in the Riverlands with no lord. My Aunt Lysa is so alone in the Vale, and he’s always had such close connection to the Tully family. Just imagine how pleased he’d be at the chance to marry her.”

There’s a pause before Joffrey says, “That would remove him from the Small Council—”

“But keep him in our favor.”

Since she plans on dying, she doubts any of this will come to pass, but if it happens quick enough, Lord Baelish should figure out the reason. Jon is calling the banners. If she can cause discontent within the Red Keep before she leaves, that _should_ help weaken them. It’s not as though Joffrey cares enough about to her that he’ll actually become angry at her disappearance, after all.

 

 

“I’m surprised you haven’t changed your colors yet, Robyn,” Cersei says, the woman having apparently taking her age and their familial relation as reason to cut formalities. Considering the discomfort “Your Grace” brings her, Robyn doesn’t particularly mind. “Some people may think your loyalties still lie elsewhere.”

She was wondering through the gardens when Cersei found her, memorizing guard routes and times where the place below her window is unoccupied. She doesn’t need this. “Rising tensions or not,” she answers. “That doesn’t change how horrible I look in red and gold. Or yellow, if you meant the colors of House Baratheon.”

“Well, those are the colors of your husband’s house.”

“My dress does have black, if that makes you feel more comfortable about things.”

When they reach the edge of the gardens overlooking the sea, they pause. “You’re a queen now, Robyn,” Cersei says, turning to her. “Everything you do, every movement you make, people will judge. Your father is already held for treason. Your sister is missing, last seen with you. My last advice you ignored, or perhaps didn’t have time to act, I don’t know. But here’s more, if you wish to follow it: if you want the court to trust you, do everything in your power to show them they have right to.”

As a princess, Robyn would just have to nod and agree, but she’s Queen now, not quite untouchable but near enough. “That is verysound advice, My Lady,” she says, and doesn’t smile because she has no intention of hiding, not now, “but next time you wish to question my loyalty to my husband again, don’t hide behind the people of our court and the colors of my dress. If that’s all, My Lady, I’m to meet with Joffrey soon and should probably be leaving.”

There’s a long moment where she and Cersei just stare at each other because the woman says, “Of course. Until tomorrow, then.”

“Yes. Until tomorrow.”

She doesn’t apologize. Robyn didn’t expect her to. It’s better that she didn’t, because no apology would be genuine.

Robyn is so terribly sick of lies.

 

 

After her conversation with Cersei, Robyn decides to take greater interest in the comings and goings during of the court during her little time left here, because Joffrey isn’t the only one she needs to convince to keep her father alive. The Small Council needs convincing, too, and just because they inherently don’t respect her as a woman doesn’t mean she still can’t _make_ them respect her.

Naturally, none of them like it. “Traditionally,” Pycelle says, “it’s the, uh, King who, uh attends these meetings, Your Grace.”

“Well, the King isn’t attending, as I’m sure hasn’t slipped your attention,” she says, taking a seat because she’s learned in politics, too, whether she was meant to be or not. Who said men had to have a monopoly on ruling? “The Hand is out ravaging the Riverlands along with the new Lord Commander of the Kingsguard, and Lord Renly ran all the way back to Storm’s End. Until the time where Lord Tywin decides leaving dead fish in villages is no long amusing, or my husband joins you, I’m not leaving the small matters of my kingdom up to three people, no matter how intelligent they are.”

Either Varys is the only one smart enough to realize she won’t relent, or the only one smart enough not to want to go anywhere near Joffrey to complain, because he says somewhat quickly, “Your Grace, as you know, winter is coming. Any conflict that befalls the kingdom would already worse a naturally bad situation. We need to act before anyone else can.”

“Upon my father’s release, any call for vengeance in the North will stop,” she says. “The Lannister banners need to be removed from the Riverlands. The more peaceful the countryside is, the less smallfolk will flee to King’s Landing once winter truly does come.”

“Forgive me, Your Grace,” Baelish says, “but your father also tried to recall Lord Tywin from the Riverlands. It—”

“Then isn’t it a good thing that I’m not my father?” But Father would know what to do, he _always_ knows what to do. “You’ve all lived more winters than I have. Do you really think it wise to enter it while the a lord is actively attacking the smallfolk? Not all rebellions happen between lords and kings.”

It’s Varys, then, who says, “The Queen does make a valid point,” and she wonders if this means he’s the only one truly on her side. It’s safer to trust no one. “Long summers do lead to longer winters. We need to prepare ourselves now if we want to be ready.”

If Lord Tywin is recalled, she may lose her place here, but more likely she’ll be gone before it can happen. She’ll be gone before anything can happen. What matters is the effect she leaves.

Joffrey already hates her enough, at least. It’s not as though he can hate her any more.

 

 

On the day she finally has an opening to visit her father in the cells for the first time, she hears her new name.

“I’ve been attending Small Council meetings as the Queen, though I don’t think I’m supposed to,” she says once all the _I’m so sorry_ ’s and _it’s all right_ ’s are done. “I found out earlier today people have been calling me ‘The Wolf Queen.’”

What she doesn’t tell him is that it was Baelish who decided this was news that needed sharing during a discussion where he “thanked” her for her kindness in having him declared Lord of Harrenhal. “Well, it fits,” her father says, and gulps down his water. She should have come down before but she needed to steady her position in Joffrey’s eyes first before she did, since inevitably those guards outside are going to tell him she was here. “Why?”

As she settles down across from him, she answers, “Possibly because I haven’t allowed Cersei to take charge over any of my decisions.” That’s not without trying, either—no Lannister, nor those loyal to them here, want a Stark at their King’s side. “I know what I’m going to do, Father. I just haven’t been able to get Sansa alone.”

There’s something else she needs to happen, too, which oddly hasn’t yet, but he doesn’t need to know about that, either. “You’re the Queen,” he says. “You can’t request audience with her?”

“I have a certain measure of freedom,” she says. “I think Joffrey still doesn’t know quite what to do with me even now, but he’ll be angry enough that I’m visiting you.  The Hound is always trailing after her, and he’s not loyal to me the way he is to Joffrey or Cersei.”

Father sighs, runs his hand down his face. By the light of the fire, he looks like an old man. “Be careful, Robb,” he says, and finds her hand in the dark. “Just because you’re Queen doesn’t mean they can’t hurt you.”

“I know, Father,” she says, and doesn’t tell him how.

 

 

After she and Father discovered her husband was the product of Cersei fucking her brother, Robyn was quick to learn important people’s schedules. This included, among _actual_ important people, different guards or knights, and several different servants. It isn’t terribly difficult, then, when she steals a handmaiden’s threadbare cloak one evening, and a guard’s dagger the next. Stealing isn’t something she ever thought she’d do, nor that she likes doing, but if it can help her family, she doesn’t care.

Unfortunately, she can’t keep them in the room long without discovery, or she would have done it earlier. It’s only a couple of days afterwards that news of her brother comes to King’s Landing.  Placating the Small Council by saying she’ll write to him again, plead with him to stop this march before it can begin, is simple enough, but Joffrey is an altogether different matter. It’s dangerous, and could quite easily mean the death of her and her family, but she’s waited long enough.

It’s not really a fight. She lets him rage on, apologizes profusely for not knowing her brother as well as she thought, and when she finds an opening says, “I have a way to get them to stop. Or I think it will make them stop. As wrong as I was about this, for all I know it would get me killed instead.”

“You—”

“I’m with child.”

She’s silenced him before. It’s not entirely unusually. But this feels different. “You haven’t said anything.”

Taking a deep breath, she says, “When a Queen is with child, it’s traditionally announced. My mother’s family has a history of difficulties—she had a stillborn and lost two children before my birth, and had several problems after that. It’s why they legitimized Jon after the Greyjoy Rebellion. At the time we only had girls, and she’d already almost died during Arya’s birth. Then her own mother died during childbirth. I didn’t want to be a disappointment if I lost the child.”

The most frightening thing about Joffrey is that he isn’t always so cruel, or angry. All his rage seems instantly forgotten, and she hates that being a woman is reduced to the sons she might have. “We’re going to have an child?”

“If nothing happens,” she answers. “Let me send a raven to my brother. Once I have him or her, the Starks and Baratheons are bound together anyway, regardless of whether or not they rebel.”

He wraps his arms around her instead of striking her for being wrong about Jon. She shuts her eyes and prays to the gods not found here that Arya is safe.

 

 

Lady Cersei uses her “condition” as an excuse as surely as she does, and tells Joffrey it would be better for Robyn to rest if she’s worried about the safety of her unborn child. She’s quickly pushed from the any comings and goings, and kept largely in her room with a single guard posted outside the door. Who that is changes regularly, and she waits for one of the thinner ones to coincide with a time that none are in the gardens below her window. It doesn’t leave her with much time.

Cutting herself open is unpleasant, but she’s remarkably good at not screaming after so long with Joffrey. She slices her palm, then takes off her dress, leaving her underclothes, and throws it on the bed. Every time she cuts into it, blood from her hand gets into the fabric at the tears, and bloodies the rumbled bed sheets as well. For good measure, she cuts the very ends of her hair, and watches short red strands fall to the ground. When it looks suitably gruesome enough, she moves on to the harder part.

Robyn’s never killed anyone before, though many times she wanted to smother her husband in his sleep after rougher evenings. But she steels herself for it anyway, repeats _Arya, Sansa, Father_ , over in her head as she knocks on her own bedroom door and tells the nameless knight outside that oh yes, Ser, she needs help. He small for a knight, makes them near the same height, and she has her hand over his mouth and his throat slit deep with that stolen knife before the door is even shut behind him. Never once did this man harm her, and he died before he even knew what was happening.

Later, she decides. She’s dwell on that later when she has the time.

With his armor, he’s heavy, but she has a nervous energy in her that makes her strong, and she drags him backwards over to the far side of the bed, leaving a path of bloody footprints facing the door as she does. Once she has him down on the ground, she tugs the sword from his quiver and places the hilt in his hand, using her fingers to smear blood along the edge. Then she places one last handprint on the headboard before wiping herself and the knife off on her ruined dress. She cuts a strip of clean fabric from her sheets, and wraps it around her hand in the closest thing to a bandage that she can manage.

She has a plain grey dress and leather boots from Winterfell made for travelling, unadorned or decorated the way clothing in King’s Landing always is, and she slips that on first before tying the cloak around her neck. The knife she tucks in her boot, and she undoes the ribbon laced in her braid. Outside, the sky is darkening.

One of the few things she liked of this room was the way the light hit at sunset, but she has no time to enjoy it now. As she slips out, she’s careful to avoid the blood, and careful to avoid looking to long at the knight’s corpse. The stone down the side is too even for a grown man to climb, perhaps, but uneven enough for a girl with small hands and small feet, and it’s difficult with her palm throbbing, but she makes it down. Thankfully for her, her bedroom wasn’t terribly high off the ground.

There’re no guards in the garden yet, and she knows where they are along her path out. The dragon skulls are unwatched, and Arya showed her the tunnels the morning Father was attacked. Even if she finds her sister right away, they can’t leave yet, because they need to get Sansa, but no smallfolk had been to her wedding or coronation. Until then, safer a street urchin than noble women.

Just as the bells begin to toll, she finds the tunnel, and the Wolf Queen of King’s Landing slips from the Red Keep silent as a ghost.

 

 

“Robb!”

By the time Arya finds her, it’s early the next morning. Her sister is scuffed, thin, and dirty, but she’s safe and unharmed. “We need to get Sansa,” Robyn says, pulling the hood back over her hair again. “Jon called banners, he’s marching south to free Father. We’ll go to Riverrun, Grandfather will know where he is.”

Arya clings to her harder than she ever has in her life, and Nymeria prowls protectively around them. “What about Father?”

“Joffrey already agreed to release him. He’ll live,” she answers. “They’ll be out looking for my captor now. Arya, we need to hide.”

Though she doesn’t know King’s Landing with the familiarity that she does the Red Keep, Arya and Nymeria do, and they hide in an entirely separate tunnel from the one by the dragon skulls. “We haven’t found the ends yet,” her sister tells her, and she listens as the guards run over head, “but they lead right out the city walls.”

The wall beneath her injured hand feels solid, and it’s wide enough to fit twelve men marching. You could lead an army down here, she thinks. Jon could lead an army.

If she hadn’t failed Sansa, maybe he wouldn’t have to.

 

 

When they’re out looking for food two days later, because they still have no way to get their sister, the bells toll again.

The crowd is jeering when they arrive, Father already escorted out. Above them, Cersei still isn’t wearing her crown, and Sansa stands next to her, Joffrey on the other side. Then there’s Baelish, Pycelle, Varys, various Gold Cloaks, Sandor Clegane, the septon who married her. Something is missing. _Someone_ is missing.

Who?

Before Arya can ask what’s happening, Father says, “I am Eddard Stark, Lord of Winterfell, and Hand of the King,” and their eyes meet. Her terms with Joffrey for letting her father go never included a confession, and Robyn thinks he knows what’s about to happen as well as she does. He turns away, looks to Sansa before continuing, “I come before you to confess my treason in the sight of gods and men. I betrayed the faith of my king, and the trust of my friend Robert. I swore to protect and defend his children, but before his blood was cold, I plotted to murder his son, the husband of my daughter, and seize the throne for myself.”

Someone shouts, “Traitor!” and from the other direction a rock flies, catching Father on the eye. Robyn’s grip on Arya tightens because her sister’s hand is already reaching for Needle. She wants to help, but what can lost queens do?

“On Baelor the Blessed, bear witness to what I say—” His eyes find hers again, red rimmed, and sad but not scared, and she really thought she’d convinced Joffrey otherwise. “Joffrey Baratheon is the one true heir to the Iron Throne, by the grace of all the gods who border the Seven Kingdoms, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, and Protector of the Realm.”

This is her fault, all her fault—if only she’d kept her mouth closed, if she hadn’t gotten that book. If she hadn’t told Arya to run, and stayed with her sisters in the Red Keep, dealt with Joffrey’s hatred for her. “As we sin, so do we suffer,” Pycelle says, and right before his graze moves downward, Father looks to the left. She turns, thinks maybe he was trying to show her something, and sees a figure in black forcing himself through the crowd. Yoren? “This man has confessed his crimes in sight of gods and men. The gods are just, but Beloved Baelor taught us they can also be merciful. What is to be done with this traitor, Your Grace?”

The crowd jeers again, and Joffrey raises her hand, looking less pleased about this than she expected. “My mother wishes me to let Lord Eddard join the Night’s Watch,” he says, which doesn’t surprise her, as Cersei must understand a trapped wolf is better than a dead one. “Stripped of all lands and powers, he will serve the land in permanent exile. The Lady Sansa begged mercy for her father. But they have the soft hearts of women.” Robyn doesn’t give her sister time to react, twists her around and presses her face against her shoulder, back to their father and Joffrey. “My wife, your Queen, had a soft heart, and in return she was captured by enemies to the Crown. So long as I am your King, treason will never go unpunished. Ser Ilyn, bring me his head.”

Arya beats her fists against Robyn’s chest, trying to throw her off, and both Sansa and Cersei cry out for Joffrey to stop as the crowd cries for justice. And then Ser Ilyn is there, Ice in his hands. Right before Ice swings, Father looks out one last time, and Robyn realizes there are tears running down her face. She’d been such a fool to think she had it all planned out.

Though Arya doesn’t see it, there’s nothing she can do for Sansa, who falls faint as their father’s body goes limp. Then the ravens take flight, and a hand touches Robyn’s shoulder.

It’s Yoren, and he has to shout over the crowd. “Where’s that beast of yours, Your Grace?”

Not “Your Grace,” not anymore, and it won’t be long until she’s declared dead, as she wanted. As she thought was the right decision, but in the end all it succeeded in doing was getting her father killed. “Yes,” she answers. “Sansa—”

“I’ve got a company set up to go the Night’s Watch, I can think of an excuse for why a girl’s there, though you’ll have to watch yourself,” he tells her. “Run, Your Grace. Wolves have no friends here.”

Father’s just died, Sansa still out of her grasp, but Robyn takes Arya’s hand in hers and runs.

 

 

Robyn gets Nymeria from the tunnel. When she returns, Yoren’s cut Arya’s hair, making her look more like a stable boy than ever. “It’s bad company, this lot,” he says as Robyn adjusts her hood. Unlike her sister, her figure is too full and face too feminine to hide, “and not a single one of them would have stepped foot in the Red Keep. You’re little orphan Arry, and you’re his older sister Lyarra. I’m bringing you to the Wall, you’re coming along to help with the cooking until I can get you to Mole’s Town. It’s a bad lie, but none of them will know any better to say different. Your Grace, I’ll get you something for that hand of yours.”

 _My wife, your Queen, had a soft heart._ “It’s not ‘Your Grace,’” she reminds him. “The title never suited me much to begin with. And please not Lyarra. Lyanna?”

Yoren agrees, and doesn’t ask.

She’d never loved Joffrey, she never loved the power being Queen of the Seven Kingdoms had brought her. She just wish she’d realized earlier the degree of protection it brought her, too. Arya, Sansa, Father, she’d told herself a thousand times, and she only has one next to her.

Now Arya won’t even look at her. What had she said? _Joffrey already agreed to release him._ And the worst part of it is, Robyn really thinks he’d intended to. That he hadn’t waited for an excuse to execute her father. That she gave him an excuse he hadn’t looked for and—

When she said she was with child. _We’re going to have a child?_ he’d asked. Not _we’re to have to have an heir?_ He was excited, she realizes, genuinely excited. They discussed what they wanted to name it the same night, he laughed when she said oh, please, not Robert. She’d been too preoccupied at the time, but that had to mean something. How hadn’t she seen it before? All those months, how had she _missed_ it?

“Robb?”

Arya’s voice cuts through her sharper than any knife and she’s suddenly aware of her own shaking. “Your Grace?” Yoren says, and she tries to breathe, to calm herself as she often has these past months.

There’s something particularly shattering about this, the realization that those little moments in between—designing her crown, walks along the shoreline, the apologies, and _you’re mine_ ’s, and _I’ll never hurt you again_ ’s—that Joffrey may of cared for her. Maybe she was more innocent than she believed, despite everything she’d been through, because love, or at least ill-shown affection, apparently doesn’t stop a person’s cruelty. A man can still rape his wife, a king can still strike his queen. Be angry when she’s taken and take her father in return.

If she’d only stayed, pieced that together earlier. If only she’d been stronger, her father would be alive, and it would Sansa here with Arya, not her.

“I’m sorry,” she says, reining in the panic once again. “Just felt a bit faint for a moment. I’m better now. We’re short on time to begin with.”

Though clearly reluctant to hurry his Queen, Yoren agrees, and they begin their escape once again. Arya still won’t look at her, but she doesn’t seem quite so tense now, either. She still isn’t aware if it weren’t for Robyn, her father would be alive and Sansa free.

In the yard, they’re greeted by a swarm of boys and men, who seem wary but unsuspicious of Yoren’s terrible explanation of her presence, or Nymeria’s. No one here is important enough to attend a wedding or coronation, and no one recognizes her face.

Once again, her identity changes from Queen Robyn of Houses Stark and Baratheon to little Lyanna the orphan girl, and she wonders if she’ll ever return to Robb Stark, sister of Jon.

She doubts it, and the sky is cloudless and clear.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The fallout of Robyn Stark's disappearance is felt throughout Westeros.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, Robb's kind of screwed up in this. King's Landing didn't do good things to her.

It’s not until after Marillion the bard that Sansa first hears it. “She was with child, you know, the Queen,” one knight says to the other as she walks by, cheeks still stinging and grief heavy on her shoulders. “The Lady Cersei seemed under the impression walking would make her lose it, so I’d guard the door sometimes.”

The second knight knocks his shoulder against the first’s. “Good thing it was Jeor that evening and not you, then. He was shit company.” The first laughs. “It’s been days. If there’s as much blood as I’ve heard about, the Queen is dead.”

 “And if she isn’t, she will be soon,” he says, “but don’t go saying that near the King or you’ll get the same treatment as that bard. I’m surprised he didn’t take that fucker’s hands anyways just because he could.”

Unable to hear more, Sansa walks away, Lady at her heels. She hadn’t known her sister was with child because in the weeks following her disappearance, no one allowed them any time alone. Now Robb’s gone, and Arya is gone, and a bard sang a song about “the death of the Little Wolf” like it was amusing. Joffrey took their father’s head off, called it mercy, and still people continue to insist he loved his wife.

Sansa doesn’t believe a word of it.

 

 

Even when she was hiding in the tunnels under King’s Landing, Arya still felt like herself. She and her sister—they’re the daughters of Winterfell, ladies of House Stark, and Robb’s Queen of the Seven Kingdoms. Now they’re just a couple of orphans. She never put much stock in being a member of a Great House until the moment Yoren cut her hair.

Bumping into the fat boy doesn’t help much. “Watch yourself, midget,” the boy says, giving her a shove on the arm, and in a moment, Robb’s there right behind her.  

The taller, thinner one circles around. “Got a sword, this one,” he says. “And you’re a girl. Little lost, aren’t you?”

 “But what’s a gutter rat like you doing with a sword?” says the first, nodding to Needle, and he reminds her a bit too much of that boy she stabbed getting it back.

 “Maybe he’s a little squire.”

 “He ain’t no squire.” It takes her a moment to realize they’re ignoring Robb, something Arya’s never seen anyone do in her life. Instead she’s getting all the attention because they think she’s a boy. “He looks like a girl, too. I bet he stole that sword.”

Then the thinner one says, “Let’s have a look,” but when he goes to shove her, Robb already has her hand on her wrist, pulling her back, and the boy’s hand connects with air. “What?”

Arya’s got a grip on Needle’s hilt when her sister says, “My brother and I don’t want any trouble. Now turn around, and walk away.”

Unfortunately, that doesn’t stop the boys from advancing and for once, Arya’s the one with a weapon, not Robb. “I could use me a sword like that,” says the fat one.

 “Take it off him,” says the other. “S’not like a gutter rat and a girl can stop you.”

If only Nymeria were with them, then no one would come near them, but the moment they realized the number of Gold Cloaks walking around the city looking for Robb, they took her back into the tunnels and told her to go out the walls like they discovered before. And as skeptical as Yoren was that she would listen, Arya knows she’ll be there, but at the same time, there happens to not be here, and the fat boy’s saying, “Give it here, midget.”

 “You better give it to him,” says his friend. “I’ve seen him kick a boy to death.”

She feels Robb move behind her as the other one says, “I pushed him down and kicked him in the balls and kept on kicking him until he was dead. I kicked him all the pieces—you better give me that sword—”

Before he can finish advancing, Arya has Needle pointed to his face. “You’re not strong enough to kick anyone to death,” her sister says, “and certainly not enough to kick anyone to pieces. No matter how starved this imagined boy of yours was, he was still made of skin, tougher than it looks, and thick bones not easy to break all protecting organs not so easy to rupture.”

 “You’re a liar,” Arya says, stepping closer, forcing him to back up. “I don’t like liars. I’ve already killed one fat boy. I’m good at killing fat boys.”

That’s when he hits against someone else, and she realizes what she just said in front of Robb. But then the third boy, he’s turning around, bigger than Jon or Theon, and he asks, “So you like picking on the little ones and the girls, is that it? You know I’ve been hammering an anvil these past ten years. When I hit that steel, it sings. You gonna sing when I hit you?”

The other two boys run away without saying anything. “Thank you,” Robb says, and lays a hand on Arya’s shoulder.

With something that’s not quite a smile, he says, “It’s no trouble,” and leans down to touch Needle. “That’s castle-forged steel. Where’d you steel it?”

 “It was a gift.”

He laughs. “Don’t matter now. Where we’re going now, doesn’t matter what you’ve done. Rapers, pickpockets, highwaymen, murderers. Doesn’t seem to safe for you to be here, if you don’t mind me saying.”

 “I think together, my brother and I can handle it,” Robb says, and she’s not quite scuffed up enough to fit in the way Arya is. Yoren still needs to fix her hand. “Which are you? You mentioned an anvil, so I’m guessing something do with metalwork.”

Nodding, he answers, “Armory apprentice. But my master got sick of me, so here I am.”

That’s when Yoren calls for them all to move. On a spike somewhere here is their father’s head, and Sansa is still trapped with the King. But when they walk out those city gates, they leave all that behind, because Lyanna and Arry Waters have no one but each other and an oversized wolf.

 

 

Word comes of Ned’s death and Robyn’s disappearance in the same raven. Catelyn isn’t surprised to find she and Jon both thought the same patch of wood looked like an agreeable place to grieve.

 “I’m going to put a sword through Joffrey’s throat,” he says once she finally has him gathered in her arms. Ned promised Lyanna he would protect her boy, but now he’s gone, too, and she hasn’t thought of Jon as anyone’s but hers in a long time. “I’m going to—I’m—”

She pets down his hair the way she did when he was young. “I know,” she says, and does, because the feeling is already coiling tight inside her too. “But they have Sansa and Arya. We have to get the girls back.” They don’t know about Robb, who sent the message weeks earlier saying she wasn’t dead. “Then we will kill them.”

As Jon cries, her own need to do the same stops, and in its place a fear of uncertainty for her daughters takes hold.

 

 

Until he was seven, Jon was a Snow, not a Stark. Now he’s King in the North, apparently, and hours later, he realizes it was only shock that stopped him from laughing at the irony. “She’s _Robb_ ,” Theon says, shoving wine into his hand because since King Robert showed up, the two of them have just been gradually less antagonistic to each other, bonding over their mutual hatred for Joffrey. Now Jon thinks they’re something close to friends. “If there’s anyone in the world who can fake her own disappearance, it’s her. So take a drink, because it’s easier forgetting about one tragedy than two and you can disguise it as celebrating.”

As annoying as Theon is, he does have a point. If anyone could do it, it’s Robb, but even if she did leave of her own free will, she can’t possibly be safe. “She’s never been out of Winterfell before,” Jon says. “She won’t have a guide, probably not a map. There’s smart and then there’s impossible, and for her to find us would be a miracle.”

 “Stop being so pessimistic, Jon,” Theon tells him. “The raven provided no details. I wouldn’t be surprised if Joffrey  thinks we had something to do with it, considering the timeline of events.”

Yes, that thought had occurred to Jon, too, as both happened close enough together that the news could be delivered at the same time. “If that’s true,” he says, “then I doubt Joffrey’s smart enough to, but someone will use this to fuel the war effort. I’ll send the King and Lady Cersei terms, but they won’t agree with any of them.”

 “And then we defeat them in King’s Landing, and go back to Winterfell where you have to marry a Frey.” Gods, he hasn’t spared a thought to his arrangement in days, and certainly not once since the raven arrived. Both of them are silent for a long moment before Theon adds, “I’m not a fool, you know, no matter what you think. No one else might have noticed, but Robb’s the only one in Winterfell who can hold a real conversation, and you’re just as bad at hiding things as she is.”

Oh. _Oh._ Against his greatest efforts, Jon feels his cheeks burn in embarrassment. “And why did you wait until now to say this?”

Theon takes a large gulp of wine. “Because she’s probably alive, but she might be dead, and Lord Stark just died. Joffrey was a pick, and she was with him for a year. If she’s alive, and she makes it back here, don’t hurt her, or I don’t care if you’re a king now. I _will_ kill you.”

For a moment, Jon doesn’t even know what to say. Then he gathers his wits, and answers, “I won’t,” rather than, _I never would._ She was his shadow when they were children, but in the beginning he was a bastard, and it took her a long while to understand that proper ladies weren’t supposed to do much of what she liked. Of course they’ve hurt each other. It just scares him that someone else knows.

 “Good,” Theon says, and claps him on the shoulder. “I’ll see you in the morning, Your Grace.”

 “Don’t—” Jon starts, but his questionable friend is smirking, which means this is as mocking as the occasional time he would say _My Lord_ back in Winterfell. “In the morning, Greyjoy.”

Then Theon is walking away, giving Jon the privacy to return to his tent and try not to imagine Robb dead.

 

 

The last thing Tyrion expected to happen today, other than surviving, is to have his father stop him from leaving with the other lords. Jaime has been captured, Ned Stark executed, and the Queen gone all while her brother just won a major victory. Realistically, this day can’t get much worse.

Father pours his wine for him. “You were right about Eddard Stark,” he says. “If he were alive, we could have used him to broker a peace with Winterfell and Riverrun, which would have given us more time to deal with Robert’s brother. But now madness. Madness and stupidity.” He pauses, breathes deep, and continues, “I always thought you were a stunted fool. Perhaps I was wrong.”

Hearing Father say that should make Tyrion want to leap for joy, but the distinct lack of Robyn Stark’s disappearance mentioned in the list of things gone wrong makes him wary. “Half wrong,” he answers. “I may be new to strategy, but unless we want to be surrounded by three armies, it appears we can’t stay here.”

 “No one will stay here,” Father says. “Ser Gregor will head out and set the Riverlands on fire. The rest of us will regroup at Harrenhal. And you will go to King’s Landing.”

Confused, Tyrion asks, “To do what?”

 “Rule,” his father says, and sips his wine. “You will serve as Hand of the King in my stead. You will bring that boy king to heel, and his mother too, if need be, and if you get so much as whiff of treason from any of the rest—Baelish, Varys, Pycelle—”

 “Heads, spikes, walls.” Father nods. “Why not my uncle? Why not anyone? Why me?”

He answers, “Because you are my son,” as if this is something he says often. “Joffrey’s first real act as King was an execution. From what I’ve heard, it was Robyn Stark who made most decisions before this. You might need to unmake a Northern mess when you arrive.”

From what Tyrion’s heard, all that earned her the name The Wolf Queen. The utter lack of creativity is astounding, but she does have a certain degree of his respect because she clearly got a rein on his nephew. “Why hasn’t she been declared dead yet?” he says. “Supposedly there was a lot of blood, from what I’ve heard since I arrived, and it’s been nearly a fortnight now. She can’t possibly be alive.”

Leaning back in his chair, Father says, “Cersei might deny it, but the boy is in love her. I noticed it at their wedding. Yes, the girl is probably dead, but Joffrey won’t want to admit it. It’s your job to make him see sense. We don’t need a ghost in King’s Landing making decisions for us.” Then he stands, and before he leaves, adds, “And one more thing. You will not take that whore to court, do you understand?”

Tyrion thinks of Shae, and her crooked smile, and decides his day has, in fact, gotten worse.

 

 

After his wife’s disappearance, Joffrey had to get the mattress and dressings on his bed changed, and his room thoroughly scrubbed down to remove her blood. He leaves her clothing untouched in the wardrobe, though the ribbon she often wore in her hair is missing, and her crown where it sat on the desk. If he doesn’t look at his bed, it almost feel as though she could walk through the door any minute.

Robyn didn’t make for a good wife. She was insolent and spoken back, often forgetting her place and then always refused to admit it that she was wrong. There were days he lost his temper where he knows he shouldn’t have, but she was just so _frustrating_ all the time. But Mother says a king should never strike his lady, and he knows he hurt Robyn quite badly more than once, and can’t help but wonder if her being taken from him is some repayment for many times he forgot his mother’s words.

Now he sits at his desk, and turns her crown over in his hands. Robyn might have been insolent with too many opinions in that head of hers, but she was his and she was beautiful. He _loved_ her, and someone’s stolen her from him. Her brother, Renly, Stannis, it matters little—with the Lannister host, he can destroy all, and one must have her. With as much blood as there was, Mother says Robyn must have lost their child. Somehow he knows beyond a doubt that she’s still alive, but that he believes. She’d been so afraid when she told him. He wonders if she’s scared now.

When he gets her back, they can make a new child. The Seven Kingdoms will again be reunited, and Robyn will be at his side, his wife, his Queen. And Joffrey knows there is no other way this can end.

 

 

Despite their best efforts, both Arya and Robb sleep little. They also sleep away from the rest of the group, Nymeria guarding them closely, and then Yoren between them and the others, and if Gendry is trying to be subtle in his attempts to be their guard, he’s failing miserably. But right now Arya is awake, and she knows her sister is too, and it’s dark, so she says, “I killed someone. It was an accident,” because she never could in daylight.

A long moment passes before Robb says in a very small voice, “I killed someone, too. It wasn’t an accident.”

Though the sky is cloudy, Arya has no trouble finding her sister’s hand in the dark. “It was when I was getting Needle,” she tells her. “The boy came up behind me and said he was going to turn me into the Queen—Lady Cersei. I turned to tell him to go away, and Needle went through his stomach.”

 “There was a guard outside my room. I needed the room to look as though there was a great struggle, and I slit his throat.”

On some level, Arya knows this is a conversation they’ll never discuss again come morning, but it feels good knowing she isn’t alone in this. At the same time, though, she wishes her sister had been able to escape some other way. One that allowed her to get Sansa, too. “He hurt you, didn’t he?” she asks, because she never did find out in King’s Landing.

 “Sometimes married couples argue,” her sister answers, and curls up on her side. “Joffrey didn’t like that I argued back. Then, when he calmed down, he would apologize and promise to never do it again. He always did apologize, though.”

Father always kept his promises. In King’s Landing, more often than not, Robb had bruises on her arms, and the scrunched up look on her face that can only mean she’s upset. Arya had been asking for an explanation, not a justification.

Then Robb squeezes her hand in goodnight, and Arya falls asleep to the realization that there’s something darker in the world than the injustice of kings.

 

 

Sansa is a frozen beauty in the sunlight of King’s Landing, though her hair is even brighter than her sister’s. When she talks, her words are meaningless, and Tyrion thinks that perhaps Queen Robyn isn’t the only Stark girl who’s dangerous.

 

 

“Do you know what they said about Joffrey and your sister in my camp before you captured me?” Ser Jaime asks when Jon finally calls on him, and he really is a pathetic sight. “That Joffrey had but one similarity to his grandfather—he might rule the Seven Kingdoms, but it was Queen Robyn that ruled him. You and your men act as though she was some innocent girl, but no one innocent can rule this country.”

While Jon doesn’t doubt that, Robb wasn’t there very long, and at the wedding she hadn’t she seemed changed much at all. “She’s gone,” he says, too tired of all of this for Ser Jaime’s words to affect him. “My father’s dead at the order of your son, and my brother can never walk again because you pushed him from a window. I’m sending your cousin down to King’s Landing with peace terms.”

Though he hasn’t sent them yet, he has them written. The sooner he gets this war done with, the better. “Do you think my father is going to negotiate with you?” the other man says. “You don’t know him well.”

While that may be true, he thinks perhaps Lord Tywin is beginning to know him, and more than that they all know his sister. “No,” he answers, “but this is war. Ignored negotiations are better than no negotiations at all.”

 “Three victories don’t make you a conqueror.”

 “They don’t make me defeated, either,” he says, and turns to leave. “Enjoy your stay, Lannister. You won’t be leaving any time soon.”

He latches the pen door behind him, and feels Ser Jaime’s glare heavy on his back as he walks away.

 

 

As Robyn sat on the Small Council during her short stay as Queen, Cersei sees it as her right to do the same. The idiot Stark girl made a mess of things and as a proper Lannister, it’s Cersei’s duty to the Seven Kingdoms to set things right.

This would be easier if Tyrion hadn’t decided to finally show his face. “You brought this on yourself,” he says as she takes a seat next to him.

For the past few days, she’s been dismantling Robyn Stark’s handiwork and she does not need her little brother taking the girl’s place right now. She’s had to convince Joffrey to keep Petyr Baelish on as Master of Coin, gave a reverse order just today to close the gates to peasants and discontinue the makeshift safe areas erected in alleyways for them, stopped an order to her father to withdraw his troops before it could be sent—no, she most certainly does not want Tyrion suddenly acting as Hand in their father’s stead. “I’ve done nothing,” she says, and it’s true, because no matter how she looks at this, the mess is the Stark girl’s fault and not her own.

 “Exactly,” he says, accusatory. “You did nothing when your son called for Ned Stark’s head. Now the entire North has risen up against us—”

 “I tried to stop it—”

 “Did you? You failed.” Perhaps she wouldn’t have, had Joffrey not seen Ned Stark’s death as a warning to whoever stole his wife. “That bit of theater will haunt our family for generations.”

She taps her fingers on the table. “Jon Stark is a child.”

Expectedly, Tyrion just has to disagree. “Who’s won every battle he’s fault,” he says, and then, in a tone so condescending it makes her want to claw his eyes out, adds, “Do you understand we’re losing this war?”

Just because Father wasn’t teaching her didn’t mean she wasn’t listening. It was the one thing she and Robyn had in common. “What do you know of warfare?”

 “Nothing,” he answers, which does _nothing_ to make her feelings towards him at the moment any warmer. “But I know people. Robyn Stark is likely dead by now, regardless of what your son says. I think we can both agree on that. Her brother is smart enough to know it too. Joffrey faults them, they fault us—it’s their late aunt’s kidnapping all over again.”

Lyanna, Lyanna, the name that haunted Cersei’s marriage for years. People in King’s Landing have already drawn comparisons to her mother and father, which is irritating enough, and the reason Robert wanted the Stark girl and Joffrey married to begin with was all because of _Lyanna._ Tyrion isn’t special in seeing the parallel. But she doesn’t want to talk about _Lyanna Stark_ , so she turns to him and says, “Joffrey is King.”

 “Joffrey is King,” her brother repeats.

 “And you are here to advise him.”

 “I am here to advise him.” At the very least, he seems to know his place, Cersei thinks, and again taps her fingers on the table. “And if the King listens to what I have to say, the King might just get his Uncle Jaime back.”

Her hand stills. “How?”

Without pause, he answers, “You love your children. It’s your one redeeming quality—that and your cheekbones. The Starks love their children as well. Their oldest daughter may be dead, but we still have two of them.”

Reluctantly, she tells him, “One,” and she already knows this isn’t good.

 “One?” he repeats, but she’s already saying, “Arya, she disappeared,” she quickly she overlaps him.

Tyrion, of course, is not amused. “Disappeared? In what, a puff of smoke?” Once again he smiles, and it’s humorless. She wonders how he’ll react when he discovers Robyn was with child. Despite hating her, even Cersei will admit there was no worse timing; even if the girl is alive, the child can’t possibly be. “We had three Starks to trade, and a fourth on the throne. You chopped one’s head off, let another escape, and a third was kidnapped from her own bedroom with a guard outside the door. Must be hard for you, being the disappointing child.”

By now, everyone here knows wolves have claws. Cersei needs to remind them lionesses do, too.

 

 

Within a week, half the men in the company are either looking for a way rape little Lyanna the orphan girl, or they’re in love with her. Either way, Yoren’s glad for that wolf of theirs, because he’s not looking to get the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms more hurt than she already is. At least Lady Arya he can disguise as a boy, because no one wants to go after another skinny little boy when there already three others just like that.

There’s this boy Gendry from Flea Bottom, though, cleverer than the rest, and Yoren thinks he might know a thing or two. He’s the Queen’s age, Yoren’s guessing, maybe a little older, and is just as protective of Arry as Lyanna. So he watches the three of them closer than usual when Gendry’s around, just to be safe. They’re Benjen’s blood, those girls, even if the man did give up his family and titles the connection is still there, and Yoren doesn’t doubt he’d be dead in a minute if his Night’s Watch brother found out he let something happen to one of his nieces. He’d been angry enough when he discovered the oldest was all lined up to marry the future King.

At night, the girls don’t sleep, even with their beast to guard to them. If they get news of their brother, Yoren’s pointing them in the boy’s direction instead of Winterfell, quicker protection than a long march filled with men soon to be starved of a woman’s touch. He thinks it’s a sorry state for the Night’s  Watch, if that’s even a thought to cross through his head. Cut throats, thieves, rapers, and bastards. That’s all they are now, and he should’ve appealed to Queen Robyn for help when she was still in the position to do something about it.

Because winter is coming, and there’s no fancy Southorn lord alive who knows what they means.

 

 

Robyn Stark was many things, and a fool one of them, but she wasn’t foolish in regards to her feelings towards Petyr Baelish.  But she was young, and didn’t yet understand that it’s better to keep an enemy close than to send them away somewhere they can scheme. It’s for this reason that Cersei keeps him on the Small Council, but it’s also for this reason that she reminds him that unlike the Stark girl, if she wants him gone, she’ll slit his throat, not marry him off.

 “Seize him,” she tells the guards, and they do, because now that Robyn Stark is gone, everyone but Joffrey in the Red Keep is hers to command. “Cut his throat. Stop! Oh wait, I’ve changed my mind, let him go. Set back three paces. Turn around. Close your eyes.” All her orders they follow without question because Lord Baelish is wrong and she’s the one who understands the truth behind where power lies. She steps closer, looks him eye to eye, and smiles. “Power is power,” she continues. “Do see if you can take some time away from coins and your whores to locate Arya Stark for me. I would very much appreciate it.”

Then she walks away, and her men follow without directive. Joffrey may refuse to believe his wife is dead, but that doesn’t mean Cersei can’t rule as Queen.

 

 

 Unlike Robb, Jon’s never trusted Theon much, even now, so he doesn’t bother suggesting using his father for ships. He’s not even particularly sure if he would want to leave when a girl who’s close to a sister for him might be out there somewhere, probably lost and trying to find her way to this camp. “The Lannisters are going to reject your terms, you know,” he says anyway, though, after Ser Alton is sent away to ride to his cousin.

Jon frowns, but the boy if often frowning, so this is no great shock. “I know.”

 “You can fight them in the field as long as you like,” Theon says, because he might have lived in Winterfell for most of his life, but he has read up on naval strategy and warfare. “We won’t beat them until you take King’s Landing. You can’t take King’s Landing without ships. Between Renly and Stannis, Renly has more now that he married into the Reach.”

Alternatively, Jon never read much on sea power at all, and he asks, “How many more?”

Which brother would actually make for the better king is debatable, as Theon’s never met either of them, but the North’s going to be its own country now. He supposes it doesn’t matter to them much. “From what I know?” he answers. “They’ve got enough to rival the royal fleet. If you’re going to send someone to negotiate a alliance, you better do it soon.”

 “Well, unless Renly comes here, I can’t do it myself, unfortunately,” Jon says, but the frown’s not so deep now. “I could send my mother. She has no banners to lead, and Lord Renly knows her.”

Theon has a truly terrible feeling about this, but decides against mentioning it. He hasn’t felt right about much of anything recently, really, but Robb’s missing, Arya has yet to be mentioned, and Sansa is definitely a hostage in King’s Landing. Perhaps he should be more worried if he has a good feeling about something.

 “I’m going to go tell her,” Jon suddenly says. “If she leaves at first light, we can get it done quicker. I’m ready to go home.”

Even if this alliance does work out, the war won’t be over in a fortnight. Theon knows it, and Jon knows it, and every soldier here knows it, too. But nothing lasts forever, and that’s what he’s choosing to believe until proven otherwise.

 

 

There are extra clothes here, Arya’s knew that already, but she’s not expecting it to wake up one morning and find that underneath Robb’s cloak, she’s suddenly wearing breeches and a tunic. Identical to her own, really, except at a larger size, and as Yoren suspected would happen, it doesn’t hide that she’s a girl in the slightest.

            When Robb notices her looking, she says, “Men’s clothes are easier for travel,” and no matter how well concealed it is, Arya knows her sister well enough to catch the lie.

 

 

Catelyn had never put much stock in the idea that history repeats itself, but Robb appears to have been taken. Whether she planned it herself or not, the truth remains the same: her disappearance just helped escalate a war.

Once, it was Ned and Robert who allied together after Rickard and Brandon Stark were murdered by the King and Lyanna vanished. Now Jon is asking her to negotiate an alliance with Renly in light of his father’s death, brother’s crippling, and his sister’s potential kidnapping. The situation may not align perfectly, but the similarities are there. And they’re devastating, because she’ll never forget Ned returning to Winterfell with a little bundle in his arm, telling her, “Lyanna made me promise.”

And they may be siblings, not in love, but if it’s Jon who’s been blamed for it, then that makes him the Rhaegar of this time. No, she thinks as her son— _hers,_ not Lyanna’s, for she’s the one who answered every one of his childhood questions, kissed every scrape and bruise, who watched him grow into a man—wraps her into a hug and promises her that they’ll be reunited soon. No, she’ll not see them have the same fate. Eventually everyone dies, but Jon and Robb don’t need to die so young.

She tells him Ned would be proud, and he looks so hopeful she thinks her heart could break from it.

 

 

The day after the Gold Cloaks come, Arry confronts him about it while Lyanna’s off talking to Yoren, the wolf next to her, and Gendry’s just surprised it hadn’t happened earlier. “No idea,” he answers, carrying his pail of water to the well.

Arry, though, doesn’t believe him, and immediately says, “You’re liar.”

 “You know, you shouldn’t insult people who’re bigger than you.” He doesn’t get how anyone could ever look at her and think she’s a boy, because she’s even littler than her sister, and her sister’s not all that big.

 “Then I’d never be able to insult anyone,” she says, and he can hear the frown in her voice.

Even though they’re the real liars, and he’s not normally one for liars, he likes both well enough. He doesn’t want to see them get hurt, and the way the others look at Lyanna is bad enough as it is. “Well, I don’t care what they want,” he tells her, and it’s true. “No good’s ever come of those questions.”

As Arry repeats, “‘No good’s ever come?’” he dumps the pail of water and finally glances over at her. “Who else’s asked questions before?”

 “How can someone so small be such a pain in my ass?”

More insistently now, “Who else asked questions?”

If she were anyone else here, he’d just walk away, but she sounds so concerned he knows this can’t only be about him. “The Hand of the King,” he answers. “Hands of the King. Lord Arryn came first, few weeks before he died, then Lord Stark came, few weeks before he died.” By now, he’s starting to think he might be cursed.

She takes a step back, and her face’s gone pale. “Lord Stark,” she says, and it’s not a question. It doesn’t take much to guess she knew him. Maybe that’s why she and her sister ran. The two don’t look much alike, but he believes it that they’re related by blood.

 “See?” he says. “Asking me questions is bad luck. You’ll probably be dead soon.”

When he walks away, she follows close at his heel, refusing to leave him alone. If he is cursed, he’s not too keen on the idea of her dying. “What do they ask about?”

Apparently she’s not getting the hint. Across the clearing, the sunlight catches Lyanna’s hair and she’s the brightest thing here. Yoren obviously wants to see them safe, too, and Gendry thinks the man’s an idiot for bringing them along. “My mum,” he says, hoping Arry will clear off.

Of course, she doesn’t. “Who’s your mum?”

With a shrug, he says, “Just my mum. Worked in tavern, died when I was little.”

 “And who’s your father?”

 “Could be one of those Gold Cloak bastards for all I know,” he says, though he doubts it because they wouldn’t come looking for him, then, after years of ignoring him. He’s been doing all right on his own, ignored by his father. “What about you, anyway?” he adds. “You and Lyanna thought they were after the two of you. Why? Did you kill someone or is just ‘cause you’re a girl.”

The way he figures, he should admit he knows eventually. Better now than never. “I’m not a girl,” she says so quickly it’s bullshit.

He laughs and says, “Yes, you are,” because he doesn’t care one way or the other personally. “You think I’m as stupid as the rest of them?”

Again, she follows him instead of running. “Stupider,” she says. “The Night’s Watch doesn’t take girls, everyone knows that. It’s why Lyanna’s going to Mole’s Town.”

For the first few days, she’d stumble over Lyanna’s name, even if Lyanna never stumbled over hers, so at least her sister’s is fake. Arry probably is too. “Yeah, that’s true,” he agrees. “You’re still a girl.”

 “I am not!”

 “Yeah? Well, pull your cock out and take a piss, then.” The Gold Cloaks want him, he’s been keeping an eye on these two for weeks, and he’s sick of the lies.

She backs up slow before saying, “I don’t need to take a piss.” He turns away again, gives her a moment to tell the truth on her own this time. Eventually, she does relent. “Lommy and Hot Pie can’t know. _No_ one can know.”

“And they won’t, not from me.”

 “My name’s not Arry, it’s Arya,” she tells him, which explains why her sister was so comfortable saying it, he supposes. “Of House Stark.” It doesn’t take more than a moment for what that means to hit him, and he stops shaking the pail. Them being girls is one thing, but everyone in King’s Landing knows about the Starks. “Yoren’s taking us to our brother.”

Hoping that there’s more than one Stark family out there, he asks, “Who’s your father? The Hand? The traitor?”

Immediately, he knows he said the wrong thing. “He was never a traitor!”  Arry—Arya says. “Joffrey is a liar. He promised my sister he wouldn’t kill him, and then did it anyway.”

Oh, no. No. This isn’t real. This is much worse than normal girls. “So you’re a highborn, then,” he says. “You’re a lady. And she’s…” He looks again in the direction of Lyanna, and her hair spilling down her back. Just because he’s from Flea Bottom doesn’t mean he missed all the stories and gossip. He knows the description.  “That’s the Wolf Queen. That’s Queen Robyn.”

Arya’s quick to say, “No. I mean, yes. Everyone thinks she’s dead, so she’s not _really_ Queen. And our mother was a lady, and our sister, but I’m—”

Regardless of what she thinks, he’s from Flea Bottom, his mother worked in a tavern, he’s a real bastard. He knows the difference in class. “But you’re a lord’s daughter, you lived in a castle,” he says. “Your sister married King Joffrey and—and all that about cocks, I should never have said that. And I’ve been pissing in front of you and everything. I should be calling you ‘Milady’ and your sister ‘Your Grace.’”

 “Do not call me ‘Milady!’” Oh, of all the girls in the world, he pissed in front of the Queen of the Seven Kingdoms and Lady Arya of Winterfell. “And Robb doesn’t like ‘Your Grace.’”

 “As Milady commands.” He bows with a flourish, hoping to make a joke out of it, but she just shoves him harder than he thought a girl of her size could. “Well, that was unladylike.”

She shoves him once again, and he stumbles backwards on a root. Before either of them can do anything else, Ly— _Queen Robyn_ calls out, “Arry, come here!” and he wonders which god decided he deserved luck this bad.

 

 

At nightfall, Arya stands watch with Nymeria while Robb shakes Gendry awake. Yoren’s waiting for them by the road with a torch in hand, and a map. “We’re leaving before the Gold Cloaks come back,” she hears her sister whisper. “You can come along, if you like.”

Whatever Gendry says is barely even a mumble, but he must’ve agreed, because next moment he’s standing, gathering his things. Robb has her hood up again, hiding her hair, and without it showing she’s just a shadow. Even if travelling with the Night’s Watch wasn’t the safest idea in the world, Arya felt better with that than leaving on their own. They’re barely into the Riverlands, and they’re going to have to walk all the way to Riverrun unless they hear of Jon somewhere else.

 “The road curves, but it’s a straight shot to Riverrun,” Yoren tells them, and Gendry rubs exhaustion from his eyes. Both Arya and Robb are used to sleepless nights. “I’ve given you some coin along with the food, but don’t stop to buy anything unless you’re desperate. And whatever you do, avoid Harrenhal. I wouldn’t put it past the Lannisters to be using it.”

At the mention of Harrenhal, Robb fidgets like she’s uncomfortable, and Arya decides this is just another thing she’ll have to ask about later. “We’re in your debt,” her sister says, and pulls her cloak tighter around herself. “When the war is through, we’ll send men to the Night’s Watch. Winter is coming, you’re going to need the help.”

Arya remembers what Bran told her before all this, about the Night’s Watch deserter and his talk of white walkers. Is their luck genuinely terrible enough that the man might not have been mad after all? “That’s very good of you, Your Grace,” Yoren answers, and then turns to Gendry. “They don’t need to bring you with them, but they are anyway. Keep ‘em safe, boy.”

As Gendry promises he will, and Yoren passes Robb a bag of food and coin, Arya looks back at the sleeping men and hopes Lommy and Hot Pie will be safe wherever they go.

 

 

Even though Robb’s been gone for a while now, rumors continue to circulate, and Sansa hears so many it makes her want to scream. Her sister has yet to be declared dead by the King, though everyone else believes it, and it isn’t long before the ghost stories begin.

From a lady in waiting first: “Shyra says you can hear a woman crying in the royal quarters.”

Then, later, a knight: “Near the Small Council room—haven’t you seen her out of the corner of your eyes?”

If Robb truly is dead, then her ghost is where her bones are, but similar stories continue (“I’ve heard you can see her standing behind His Grace sometimes;” “If you listen close, you can hear her laughing;” “Ser Yance says you can see her on the shore at night calling for the King”), and Sansa might not hear them often, but it’s enough. People still insist Joffrey loved Robb too, and say that he can’t see her ghost because he’s blinded by the idea that she might still be alive somewhere. But Joffrey never loved her, he’s not the sort of boy to love anyone or anything. Sansa may have been wrong about life and songs, but she at least knows love isn’t supposed to leave bruises on a wife’s skin.

Sometimes, when she sits on her windowsill and looks out across the Blackwater, she wishes that Arya were here with her. Then she realizes how selfish that is, because perhaps her sister has found somewhere better, and she wouldn’t wish King’s Landing on anyone. She came here a stupid little girl with her head full of songs, but she’s learned the truth now. But that doesn’t stop her wanting Arya, and wanting Jon, and Bran, and Rickon, and Father and Mother and Robb and even Theon.

But most of all she wants Winterfell, to stand outside for the first of winter’s snows, with her remaining family together and safe.

 

 

Finding out about the murder of Robert’s bastards is the most disturbing news Tyrion has learned in years. He’s not surprised that Cersei calls on him after he dismisses her latest pet. “Janos Slynt commanded the City Watch,” she says, pacing back and forth. “You had no right to exile him.”

Even with orders, murdering an infant is deplorable enough to grant a man his remaining years on the Wall. “I had every right,” Tyrion answers, which is true. “I am the King’s Hand.”

 “You’re _serving_ as the King’s Hand til Father gets here,” his sister snaps. “ _I’m_ acting as Queen Regent until Joffrey gathers his sense and declares Robyn dead.”

Or until she’s remarkably found, but Tyrion decides not to comment on that. It’s doubtful anyway. “Listen to me, Queen Regent,” he says. “You’re losing the people. Do you hear me?”

She laughs. “The people,” she repeats. “You think I care?”

As she walks back to stand across from him, he says, “You might find it difficult to rule over millions that want you dead. Half the city will starve to death when winter comes, the other half will plot to overthrow you, which from what I’ve heard from the Small Council, Robyn Stark understood, and she was only Queen for a few weeks. And your gold-plated thugs just gave them their rallying cry—‘Lady Cersei slaughters babies.’”

Acting as Queen Regent or not, another Queen had been crowned. Ordinary smallfolk won’t care about the distinction. He expects her to protest, and she doesn’t, which only makes him angrier. “You don’t even have the decency to deny it,” he says, but then she paces past him again, and the realization strikes him. “It wasn’t you who gave the order, was it? Joffrey didn’t even tell you. Did he tell you? I imagine that would be even worse.”

She has her arms wrapped around herself now, almost as though she’s scared. “He did what needed to be done.” Then the anger he’s more familiar with seizes her and she continues, “You want to be Hand of the King? You want to rule? This is what ruling is. Lying on a bed of weeds, ripping them out by the root one by one before they strangle you in your sleep.”

 “I might not be King, but I think there’s more to ruling than that.”

 “I don’t care what you think!” Yes, that is something he’s learned. “You’ve never taken it seriously. You haven’t, Jaime hasn’t.” She sits, finally, and goes quiet. “It’s all fallen on me.”

 “As has Jaime, according to Stannis Baratheon.”

Of course, as her brother, Tyrion is usually quite good at predicting Cersei’s reactions to thinks, and he’s not surprised when she says, “You’re funny. You’ve always been funny. But nothing will ever compare to your first joke. Remember? When you ripped my mother open on your way out of her and she bled to death?”

It’s been well over twenty years now, but they’re Lannisters and that will never be enough time to erase a grudge this deep, even for a baby. “She was my mother too.”

Cersei is unmoved. “And now she’s gone, all for the sake of you. There’s no bigger joke in the world than that.” Then she stands, and before she leaves, adds, “Robyn was with child when she was taken. If you plan to convince Joffrey she’s dead, it’s going to be more difficult than you think.”

Then she exits, and doesn’t even shut the door behind her.

 

 

Melisandre looks into the flames, and sees a boy with two names and hair black as pitch. Then she sees a queen with a bloody crown of leaves upon her head, and the truth is known. Robyn Stark is alive.

Though at first he’ll be lead astray, seek help from the wrong Baratheon, it’s Jon Stark who will lead King Stannis to the Throne.  But first his sister must show them the way.

 

 

It’s not until they’ve been away from the Night’s Watch for a few days that Arya first catches sight of the ribbon. Robb had it tied to the hilt of her knife, which she keeps tight in her boot, but it doesn’t take long before she starts playing with it. “You wore ribbons like that in your hair,” Arya says, because of course she recognizes something she saw so often. “That’s from King’s Landing.”

For a reason she can’t quite place, the sight of it is unsettling. How embarrassed Robb looks to have it pointed out only makes it worse. “It was an accident,” she says, and slips it away. “I meant to drop it, but I hadn’t let go of it when I hide the knife, I suppose.”

If Arya remembers correctly, her sister  didn’t start wearing it until _after_ her wedding, which means it’s not _just_ from King’s Landing, but more specifically from _Joffrey._ “Why did you keep it?” she asks, uncomfortable. “I thought you hated that place. I thought you hated _him._ ”

 “I do,” Robb answers, clearly uncomfortable now too, and touches her stomach, something she’s been doing often lately. “We should start looking for somewhere to make camp soon before it’s too dark to see.”

 “Of course,” Gendry says a bit too quickly, and Arya wonders what she missed.

 

 

In Jon’s camp, she can feel the war in every corner, but when she comes to Renly’s, Catelyn finds a tournament and cheers. Her son is just eighteen, and he knows already that war is no game. It seems as though this men have yet to figure that out.

The man who introduces her speaks with the voice of a longtime squire. “Your Grace,” he says. “I have the pleasure to present to you Lady Catelyn Stark, sent as an envoy by Jon, Lord of Winterfell.”

 “Lord of Winterfell, and King in the North,” she says before Renly can answer, because if these Baratheons can declare themselves King of Westeros, then she’s allowed to remind them all the North chose Jon as theirs. At least to this camp’s credit, she’s heard no comments yet that once his name was Snow.

In return, Renly smiles, and it seems more genuine than she expected. “Lady Catelyn,” he says. “Pleased to see you. May I present my wife, Margaery of House Tyrell.”

She bows her head in greeting and respect, and Lady Margaery says, “You’re very welcome here, Lady Stark. I’m so sorry for your loses.”

 “You are most kind.”

Renly says, “My Lady,” and she shifts her attention back to him. “I swear to you, I will see the Lannisters answer for your husband’s murder. When I take King’s Landing, I’ll bring you Joffrey’s head.” His men cheer. “And when we discover who’s responsible for your daughter’s disappearance, they’ll answer for their crimes, too.”

Again, his men cheer, the sound echoing out across the sea, and this is perhaps the quickest agreement to an alliance ever made. Perhaps it means something is finally going their way.

 

 

 

Within their first day of travel, the girls set him straight about what to call them, and though it’s an awkward thing, it’s better than calling Robb “Queen” in his head all the time, he supposes. But he’s curious, doesn’t think anyone could blame for it when usually he’s the one getting all the questions, so after camp’s all set up and the sky’s gone dark one day, he asks, “Where’d you get Lyanna from? Arry I can see from Arya, but not Lyanna from Robyn.”

Both sisters glance at each other before Robb answers, “Lyanna was our aunt. She’s dead. Died before either of us were born.”

 “Yoren came up with them, not us,” Arya adds as Nymeria settles in beside her. “Though he wanted to call her Lyarra first. Why did you change it? You haven’t told me.”

There are times, sitting with them, where Gendry wishes he could just disappear because their conversations can feel very private. Like now, where after a strange sort of moment Robb says, “Joffrey and I, not long before we left, had this discussion about what we would name our first child. We’d never talked about it before, so we were only going down family trees rather than thinking of original names. For a boy we didn’t get too far, just decided we’d never name anyone Robert because it was too similar to Robyn. But for a girl—well, Cersei would have killed me if I chose Lyanna. Lyarra just seemed the safest option, though of Lannister names Joanna isn’t terrible.” She pauses, then says, “It would have too strange, I guess.”

Gendry doesn’t have siblings, but he does know there’s usually a reason why a husband and wife start talking baby names, and her hand goes to her stomach a lot. Even if Robb weren’t a queen, though, it wouldn’t be his place to ask, so it’s a bit of relief when Arya says, “He didn’t—you’re not—?”

Quickly shaking her head, Robb says, “No, no. It just came up in conversation, that’s all. Once we got in grandparents, he suggested Tywin for a boy, but I changed his mind quick enough—we need firewood, I’m going to take Nymeria to collect more firewood.”

Nymeria follows her when she stands, and Arya just watches her leave, confusion written all across her face. Gendry might not know a whole lot compared to a couple of highborn girls, but he thinks he’s seen a few things they haven’t. So Arya might not have understood it, but he recognized what the look was that Robb got right before she left. And a look like that never means anything good.

 

 

The last person Catelyn thought she’d see, or that she wanted to see, in Renly’s camp was Petyr. “You may have heard false reports,” he saying as she stands, and she doesn’t care to listen to him now.

 “You betrayed Ned.”

 “Betrayed him?” he says, and she steps nearer. “I _wanted_ him to serve as Protector of the Realm. I begged him to seize the moment—”

Perhaps to Lady Cersei he can lie, but this is the boy she grew up with, and she won’t fall for his tricks. “I trusted you,” she says. “My husband trusted you. My _daughter_ trusted you. And you betrayed our faith with treachery.”  He tries to protest, and she doesn’t want to see his face anymore, let alone hear his voice. “Just get out!” she shouts, and turns away before she can cry.

But Petyr doesn’t leave. “I’ve loved you since I was a boy,” he says, as though that were appropriate. “It seems to me fate has given us this chance—”

When he puts his arm on her, she breaks, grabbing a knife off the table, and twisting around, leveling it to his face. She thinks of Ned laying beside her in warmth of their bed, a fire burning bright in the hearth while down the hall they can hear the children laughing, and of Robb on her last day in Winterfell, of those snowflakes melting in her hair. “If you hadn’t betrayed my husband,” she says, walking forward and forcing him to step back, “then none of this would have come to pass. Ned would be alive. My oldest daughter would safe. My youngest would be home. Open your mouth again, Petyr, and I will drive this knife through your eye.”

Wisely, he doesn’t tempt her, and she walks him straight out of the tent. Once he’s going, she laces the flap closed behind her, and has to remind herself her older daughter might still be coming back her.

 

 

Again, the Stark host comes out of battle undefeated. Jon doesn’t know who has less men, him or Stannis, but he does know Renly and the Lannisters both have considerably more. It’s not even been a year, and he’s already sick of war, but Sansa and possibly Arya are held captive in King’s Landing until the city falls. More than anything, more than even the North’s independence, he needs to see them safe in the halls of Winterfell.

And then there’s Robb, possibly dead, hopefully not. He wants his sister, and his other sisters, but most of all, he wants his remaining family happy and returned home.

 

 

They’re too close to Harrenhal for Robb to comfortable entering anywhere (did she _really_ have to give Petyr Baelish lordship over it?), so they sent Gendry into an inn alone to buy them food. He returns with news of Jon.

Once he finishes explaining that their brother’s apparently in the Westerlands, Robb takes out her map. “Well, we’re about here, in between Harrenhal and Riverrun,” she says, and points. “If we go through Riverrun and Jon’s that far away, our grandfather will most likely send a letter, which would bad, if a Lannister soldier intercepted it. It will take a few more days, but we can continue there instead.”

Like all her siblings, Arya had never left Winterfell until she went to King’s Landing. She’s never met her grandfather. By this point, she’s used the road and she’s used to walking, though she’s still not used to how strange her sister’s gotten. “I’ve got no trouble with it,” Gendry says with a shrug, and Robb worries her bottom lip, examining the map.

 “I want to see Jon and Mother,” Arya says, and the pain she feels in missing them has dulled to a low ache. “I don’t care if they’re in the Lannister’s territory.”

With a bitter smile Arya’s never seen before, Robb says, “If that makes you nervous, just remember: no matter where we are in Westeros, until I’m dead and Joffrey remarries, it’s mine.”

She’s not nervous to enter the Westerlands, hasn’t been nervous any time they had to hide from soldiers on the road, either. What makes her nervous is the edge Robb gets to her voice sometimes, and how she still hasn’t gotten rid of that ribbon.

 

 

Renly Baratheon is dead.

Gods old or new, Catelyn doesn’t know which, but one must hate her family for all this misery and death to keep clinging at their heels.

 

 

At the border of the Westerlands, they make camp, and Gendry finally tells Robb the same story he told Arya. So much happened all at once neither of them realized she hadn’t known, and the way Arya sees it, Father told her sister much more than he did her or Sansa.

As she thought, Robb does have some recognition for it. “So you’re an unacknowledged bastard armory apprentice from Flea Bottom who had two Hands of the King speak with you before their deaths about your mother,” she says, as if to summarize it. “I just realized I never asked—Gendry, how old are you?”

 “Seventeen,” he answers, and Arya realizes she hadn’t known, either. He must be about a year younger than Jon, then, who turned eighteen sometime around their father’s death.

Robb nods, pauses, then says, “You’re the last person Jon Arryn spoke to before he died. After I helped my father learn the truth behind my husband and his siblings, he told me a bit about what he’d been doing the past few weeks and you came up, just not by name. Jon Arryn spoke to you because he was looking into the bastards of Robert Baratheon. I doubt there are many other bastard armory apprentices from Flea Bottom who have had two Hands come to speak with them.”

Though Arya never made the connection before, now that it’s been brought to her attention, she thinks she can see it, a little. But only a little. Gendry’s too stunned to do much more than protest, but she looks between he and her sister and says, “Doesn’t that make the two of you related by marriage?”

While she doesn’t like thinking about Robb’s marriage to Joffrey, and doesn’t particularly like that she keeps calling him “her husband” even now, there are moments where bringing it up is unavoidable. “Joffrey’s not Robert’s natural son,” she answers, “but he does bear the Baratheon name. I suppose the argument could be made that you and I are— _that’s_ why the Gold Cloaks wanted you.”

 “What?” Gendry says, clearly more and more confused by the minute, and Arya can imagine this is quite a bit to take in all at once. “Because I’m Robert Baratheon’s bastard? Are you sure about this?”

 “Oh, he and Cersei hated each other,” Robb says. “She turned to her brother, he turned to everyone else. But Joffrey’s legitimacy was brought to question, at least Lord Stannis must know by now if not other lords. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone in King’s Landing decided to best way to handle that is to kill all of Robert’s natural born children before they can stake a claim on the throne. The Lannisters don’t exactly have qualms against killing babies, as the Targaryen children prove.”

Back in Winterfell, Mother and Father made certain all of them knew the story behind the Targaryen children and Tywin Lannister. It’s one of the reasons Arya couldn’t understand why Sansa liked Lady Cersei much, before all of this. Must not like her much now. Her sister’s too smart for that. She also doesn’t deserve whatever they must be doing her, and if only Robb had gotten her out, too. Arya hasn’t quite forgiven her for that yet.

 “My mum never talked about my father,” Gendry says, “and now you’re saying he was the King of Westeros and his son wants me dead. No one in your brother’s camp’s going to try and kill me, are they?”

Shaking her head, Robb answers, “The Lord of Winterfell—King in the North, if we’ve heard right—is a legitimized bastard. We don’t care where you come from.”

If Jon’s a king, then that makes Arya a princess, and Sansa an unacknowledged princess. But Robb’s a queen of one kingdom and princess of another, and Arya thinks that’s just horrible.

 

 

It’s not often Theon takes a night’s watch, but the whim caught him tonight, and he’s standing with this soldier whose name he never caught at the edge of camp when he suddenly hears a voice call out, “Theon! Theon!”

If it weren’t for the other soldier, he might think he were imagining it. Before either can react, though, three bodies come tumbling out of the forest, and Robb Stark latches her arms around her neck while little Arya’s got a grip around his waist. I’m dreaming, he thinks, but knows he isn’t, and just hugs them both back when Robb’s shoulders start to shake. Both girls feel too thin, and a boy stands uncomfortably behind them.

As he comes to sense enough to do something, Theon says, “It’s all right, you’re back, I’ll get you to Jon,” and slips his hand under Robb’s cloak, rubbing circles over back. Then he looks to the other soldier, and the boy, and adds, “Stay here, they’re friends. Keep your mouth shut. You, come with me.”

Back in Winterfell, Arya never would’ve hugged him like this, but she stays tucked under his arm as surely as her sister does as he leads them into camp. “That’s Gendry,” she says, nodding to the boy trailing next to them. “Yoren hid us away with a company bound for the Night’s Watch—that’s why my hair’s short. We left because Gold Cloaks came.”

He expects Robb to add something, but instead she leans more of her weight against him and says in a small voice, “I just want a bath that isn’t a river.”

That’s when Ghost bursts out from between two tents, silent as his namesake, and Jon just a second behind. “You’re back,” he says, and Theon can understand the sound of utter disbelief in his voice.

Arya moves to grab hold of him as she did with Theon not minutes earlier, but Robb stays, her body still shaking. He doesn’t know what that means, but he knows it’s nothing good.

 

 

Originally, after getting their story Jon intended to set the girls up in Mother’s tent and Gendry with the boys since it’s not as though they have too much extra room, but midway through explaining, Robb falls asleep on his bed. “Just let her stay here for the night, she won’t mind,” Arya says, looking from their sister to him. “She missed Ghost.”

 “I can show them where they’re staying,” Theon says, and Arya gives Jon another hug.  “They’ve been through enough for one night.”

After they leave, Jon takes a seat on the side of his bed and lightly shakes Robb’s shoulder, though he hates to wake her. He just doesn’t want morning to come and for her to open her eyes not remembering where she is. “Hello,” he says, deciding to keep anything important for tomorrow, as Ghost curls up on her other side. “It’s good to have you back.”

Her hair’s longer than when they last saw each other, her body thinner, and when she sits up, her tunic sleeve slides down her arm. “Jon,” she says, and sounds as disbelieving as he feels. “I thought I—and you’re so—Ghost, you’ve grown so big!” She smiles, then, really smiles, and scratches behind their direwolf’s ear. “Where are Arya and Gendry?”

 “Theon’s showing them where they can sleep for the night until we can find better lodgings,” he answers. “You drifted off while we were talked, and we decided not to move you. Unless you want.”

 “No, no, I’m all right,” she says, and moves over so he can settle in properly next to her. “I’m sorry about Father and Sansa. I could only get out Arya.”

Though it’s been a number of months since they last saw each other, Jon knows his sister better than anyone else in the world, and he knows when she’s blaming herself. “We’re going to get Sansa back,” he tells her. “What happened to Father wasn’t your fault. Get some sleep, we can talk more in the morning.”

Glancing towards the entrance to the tent, she asks, “Won’t someone notice?”

 “Almost no one even knows you’re here yet,” he says. “Lie down, Robb. This has to be the closest thing you’ve had to a bed in weeks.”

Instead of arguing, she leans over and unlaces her boots, slipping a knife with a blue ribbon tied to the hilt back inside the right one once they’re both off, and he does the same. He’s got questions, and there’s more she still has to tell him, but all that can wait for the morning.

 

 

Both the girls scrub themselves raw the next day, and when Robb slips into the war council to share what she knows, her hair is still damp and the clothes she wears much too large. Until Mother returns, though, a couple pieces of Jon’s spare clothes will have to do.

She’s met, of course, by the lords’ complete enthusiasm to find her alive, but she stays so close to his side none observe the common courtesy of kissing her hand. “Thank you, My Lords,” she says once all that is through. “Your kindness is most appreciated in these dark times. Now, if you’re wondering why my brother brought me here, it’s because I may know more about Small Council matters and the Red Keep than Joffrey himself.”

 “My sister wasn’t Queen for very long,” Jon adds, “but before her coronation, our father shared what he learned with her, too.”

 “A lot has changed politically since I left,” Robb says, and this is the first time since they reunited last night that she doesn’t seem restless, “but castle infrastructure is the same. When leaving the city, Arya and I found tunnels large enough to march an army through running underneath, empty. Several run directly out the city walls, and the one I left from begun right under the Red Keep where they keep the Targaryen dragon skulls. During my time in King’s Landing, I never once heard of these tunnels, and Joff—the King showed me the dragon skulls himself.”

Silence falls as she lets the information settle, and though he knows they were married for more than half a year, it still catches Jon off guard how casually she speaks of the person they’re waging a war against. They’ve only been here a day, and Arya’s commented on it, too. “Your Grace,” Lord Umber says, and it takes Jon a moment to realize he’s addressing Robb rather than him because she’s a queen even if she’s not their queen, and the title is applicable, “do you mean to say there’s a way into the Red Keep without entering the streets?”

With a slight nod, she answers, “If you stage an attack at night with a distraction force at the sea, a small force could enter the tunnels and make its way into the lower level of the Red Keep. No one would expect an attack from the inside if their attention is focused outward towards a naval attack. If negotiations with Renly go sour, there’s still Stannis.”

A murmur goes through the lords and Jon realizes he forgot to tell her of the raven. “Lady Catelyn sent word of her time with Lord Renly, Your Grace,” Lord Glover says. “Negotiations didn’t simply go sour. He was killed in his own tent. After trying to ally with his brother, Lord Stannis may not offer us even an audience.”

 “My father supported his claim,” she tells them, and though it’s not terribly noticeable, Jon sees her move closer to him. She may be less restless now, but in the short time that she and Arya have been here, Robb’s been more anxious than he’s ever seen her. “The tricky bit would be convincing him to keep the North an autonomous state, but he only knows he’s the rightful heir to the Iron Throne because my father sent a raven informing him of it. Cersei fears his army more than this one, though by now Lord Tywin may have learned to by wary of it.”

 “Well, it’s worth a try,” Jon says. “Not until we’ve gotten close enough for him to send someone to meet on middle ground, though. I’m not risking anyone getting that close to King’s Landing alone. What else?”

She hasn’t said much of anything yet, and according to Arya, she didn’t say much of anything during their time on the road, either. The most he knows is that she can help, when before this she would have told him everything already. While the change bothers him, it’s less because she’s different and more because he knows the only thing that could have caused it was something in her marriage to Joffrey. Most of that overlapped with her time with Father, and Jon doesn’t know which possibility is worse—that she hid it, or she told their father, and he did nothing.

Right now she’s blatantly avoiding looking at him. “As you may or may not know, the Lannisters didn’t just capture my father when he tried to reveal the truth. Petyr Baelish betrayed him, and Lady Cersei hid my ascension to Queen from me until after it was done. Queens don’t have much power, so I couldn’t have my father released, but Joffrey was largely inactive, so I exercised what power I had and attended Small Council meetings. I nearly removed Petyr Baelish from King’s Landing, and Joffrey supported my decision, and with Varys’ support, recalled Lord Tywin and his troops from the Riverlands. Unfortunately, I left too soon for that action to go through, and presumably much of what else I did, but it did cause further issues among members of the Council, so they’re going to have to deal with those from now on.

 “From what I’ve heard from my father, the Crown is so in debt to the Iron Bank of Braavos and Tywin Lannister, they have close to no hope of paying it back. By fighting a war, that debt will only increase, though with the Lannisters in powers I don’t know what will happen with the debt to Lord Tywin,” she continues. “The King’s decisions are rash. He has the education to be a king, but doesn’t know how to put it in practice. The more dangerous ones are Cersei, and, if he ever returns from Harrenhal to take his place as Hand, Lord Tywin.”

What he’s heard of Robb makes her sound like she’s dangerous, too, and he wonders if she knows that. They don’t hear much news from King’s Landing here, but she’s theirs, and it was enough. “We’ll contact Lord Stannis again when we’re out of the Westerlands,” he says again, and looks out to his lords, who are all staring at either each other, or his sister. “Until then, hopefully what you did to the Small Council will cause some problems for the Lannister hosts, too.”

Lord Mallister says, “And their debt. The Iron Bank won’t sit idle when it’s time to collect.”

For the first time since the meeting began, Robb’s composure breaks, and she picks at the scar on her hand. “We could worsen it,” she says, though Jon knows the lords must be expecting him to send her away now. “Most of your attacks are done at night, with little warning, correct?”

 “Yes,” he answers. It may not be the honorable way to fight, but it minimizes causalities.

 “All right,” she says. “Have you tried surrounding the enemy camp yet?  If you attack from all sides, light fire to the tents, aiming specifically for the armories and kitchens if you can locate them quickly enough, that causes a certain measure of chaos. Retreat. It’s not Tywin Lannister you’re up against, likely the commander will be likely angry enough to follow. That gives you time to surround them again, but this time in a wooded area while they’re only partially awake and their horses panicked from the fire. It’s not the noble way the fight, but it will lower their numbers and supplies.”

Again, silence falls in the wake of the tent, and this time it’s Lord Glover who breaks it when he says, “Fires are better suited for arches than foot soldiers.”

They discuss the advantages of their normal tactics over Robb’s new suggestion for another half hour, and she doesn’t speak a word for the rest of the session.

 

 

After Myrcella’s departure for Dorne and the riot in the streets, Joffrey finally allows himself to admit it.

By now, months have passed. If his wife wasn’t dead within hours after her disappearance, she must be by now.

The bells ring, loud and clear over the city, and her death is declared, but no funeral is to be held for they have no body. In the days that follow, he hears people give Sansa Stark their condolences more than once. Not even his own mother does the same for him when it’s not just his wife he lost, but his child too.

He vows to find who stole her from him, and make him pay a hundred times over.

 

 

When Catelyn returns, Arya reaches her first and holds her so tightly she can barely breathe before leading her to Robb, who stays by Jon and Ghost’s sides. She has her youngest daughter alone for some time, and it’s not until after dinner when her son is organizing another attack than she gets her oldest one just the two of them. From the moment they meet, Arya loves Brienne instantly, and they’re quick to strike up a conversation on what it feels like to be a lady who’d rather fight like a man.

Now she sits with Robb in the privacy of her tent (though her daughter has been staying with Jon apparently, too nervous to be on her own, which is heartbreaking), stitching one of her dresses to fit her daughter so she no longer needs to wear her brother’s clothes. “Arya told me she’s wearing men’s clothing to disguise herself as a boy,” Catelyn says, for she’s already beginning to get suspicious. “You may have gotten much too thin, but your hair is too long for you to be doing the same.”

Her daughter’s shoulders tense when she says, “Men’s clothes are easier to travel in, Mother.”

 “Robyn.” She doesn’t believe it for a moment.

Robb isn’t looking at her, curled up with her arms around her stomach and her knees to her chest, and Catelyn recognizes the signs. Oh gods, how well she knows. “I stained it, is all, and didn’t have spare, I wasn’t exactly in King’s Landing anymore. It was grey.”

When she goes to put her hand on her daughter’s back, Robb shrinks away. “How many—”

 “I’m never perfectly regular like most women are, it’s not the first time I’ve skipped a couple, that’s the only reason it was so bad, the—” She starts crying, then, harder than Catelyn’s seen in years, and when she gathers her shaking girl in her arms, Robb just presses her face against her shoulder. “I thought I was lying, Mother,” she continues, which Catelyn will think more on later. “If I’d known—I didn’t _mean_ to, and there was just _so much_ blood.”

Though circumstances had been different, Catelyn knows all too well what losing a child is like. Regardless of who the father might be, that’s not something a woman simply gets over. “It’s not your fault, my sweet girl,” she tells her, because it took her several years to convince herself of that. “You may have lost the child even if you stayed. You’re safe now, you and Arya, and Sansa will be too. That’s what’s important.”

But Robb’s shoulders continue to shake. “No one knows. Arya knows we were discussing names, but that’s all.” Her voice has dropped nearly into a whisper. “Lyarra for a girl. I convinced him to use a Stark name—but, but I couldn’t for a boy and—well, Jaime may be a terrible name, but he would have been mine.”

 “Oh, Robb—”

 “I lied to Arya, I said we never decided on a boy’s name,” she says, and pulls out of the hug, looking up with tears on her face and eyes bluer than the Red Fork. “Please don’t tell anyone, Mother. Please.”

Beneath her spoken words, Catelyn hears something else, too: _don’t tell Jon._ “I swear it,” she answers, and brushes away tears from under her daughter’s eyes. “If there’s anything you ever need to say, just know that I’m here to listen.”

Robb doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t need to. Not even half a year has passed since Ned was first imprisoned, and Catelyn already thinks this war has gone on for far too long.

 

 

Since the war began, Jon has been sending Lannister prisoners North to the Wall to serve until the fighting is through (unless they wish to take their vows, in which case they will continue to serve until the end of their days). He’s incredibly thankful for that decision now, as he thinks perhaps otherwise he would have no room for Ser Alton.  

 “She did that with Father, too,” Robb says after his meeting with Ser Alton is through. Most times, she likes to stay by his side, which has no qualms with, but the moment he has any dealings with a Lannister, she disappears. “I wasn’t there for it, as Cersei told Joffrey I was nowhere to be found, but he told me afterwards. She seems to like tearing paper in half.”

It’s late enough now that unless there’s a night attack, no one will bother him, so he unlaces his boots before joining her on the bed. They haven’t done anything for a number of reasons, but it’s still better having her at his side again. “Was there anyone in that family likeable?”

With a shrug, she answers, “I liked Tommen and Myrcella. They were sweet children. I don’t know how Joffrey grew to be the way he is. Tommen, for example, has kittens. One is named Ser Pounce, which is nearly as bad as Shaggydog.”

Though he came to the decision when this war began the two weren’t to be harmed, Jon hasn’t spared much thought to the younger two since then. “Shaggydog might still be worse. At least Ser Pounce sounds like a name,” he says as she settles against his side, twisting a ribbon around her fingers. After a moment, he adds, “Do you think it would have made a difference? If you’d been there when Father presented King Robert’s letter.”

 “Perhaps,” she says. “Cersei wouldn’t have had that power. I don’t know what I could have done to prevent it, though. Joffrey’s word still superseded mine, and Baelish was still a traitor. I swear, if I ever get my hands on him now that I’m no longer tied to obligations as Queen, I will kill for that.”

And Jon would let her, if he didn’t get to the man first. He doesn’t like that he sought Mother out in the Stormlands, either. “Well, he’ll be in King’s Landing when we get there. You might just have the chance,” Jon says, and takes the ribbon away as she pulls it too tightly. “It’s starting to fray.”

This isn’t the first time he’s seen her playing with it, but it is the first time he’s noticed the edges tearing. “Thank you,” she says, and takes it back, folding it up gently before slipping it away.

She offers no explanation.

 

 

Shae quickly becomes Sansa’s one real comfort in King’s Landing, and she’s especially thankful for her new handmaiden once her sister is finally declared dead. “There were six of us in the family, and we have a ward,” Sansa tells her after her conversation with Queen Cersei, who’s retaken her old position as Queen Regent now that Robb is officially gone. “Three sons, three daughters. Jon’s the oldest—he was a Snow, but Father legitimized him when he was seven and no one would ever know the difference unless they were told. Robb was two years younger than him, but growing up you could never find one without the other. I wonder if he’s heard yet. Do you think someone will send a raven to him?”

 “If they don’t, someone else will,” Shae says, and continues brushing her hair though the knots and tangles must be out by now. It just makes Sansa feel better.

What doesn’t make her feel better is the thought of Arya. If Robb’s been declared dead, what does that make their sister? No one’s heard of her in an even longer amount of time, to Sansa’s knowledge. She can barely stand losing one sibling; the thought of losing another is almost enough to break her.

There are other things, too, like what will happen now that there is no Queen and the King is just seventeen. “Joffrey will have to remarry,” she says, because Shae is the one person she can speak too in this horrible city. “Then we’ll have to listen to how much he loves his new wife.”

She doesn’t understand why people say it even now, when no one kills the father of the person they love. “Or you’ll hear about how much he doesn’t love compared to your sister,” Shae says, which sounds ridiculous, and even worse.

 “But _why?_ ” Sansa asks, frustrated now. “It’s not like it’s true.”

When Shae answers, “Because sometimes men hurt the things they love,” she puts down the brush, and Sansa realizes that maybe she wasn’t as disillusioned as she thought.

 

 

Even though he has Robb right at his side, alive and well, the raven announcing her death is still upsetting. Later, he’ll blame that on his lapse in judgment.

There’s no reciprocation when he suddenly kisses her in the privacy of their tent, and when he pulls away, she’s staring at him with wide eyes. “I’m sorry,” Jon says immediately, thinking about how he believes it when Theon said he’d kill him. “I shouldn’t—”

Before he can finish with any excuse, she cuts in, “No, no, it’s me. I just thought—well, you know. After Joffrey.”

It takes him a moment to understand the implication. “Robb, I don’t care about that,” he tells her. “I’m your brother, not some lord you’ve never met. I only care about you.”

She kisses him, then, and they’re close enough that he can feel her heartbeat against his chest.

 

 

In the shadowy halls of Dragonstone, Melisandre waits behind while her King goes to war, kept back at the word of Davos Seaworth.

Not yet, she thinks, predicting disaster already. Too soon, not yet.

 

 

For the past however many hours, Sansa was just stuck below listening to the Queen ramble. She didn’t want to find someone else in her room, but here is the Hound anyway.

 “I can take you with me,” he says, and for a moment, she’s tempted.

Then she thinks of Jon, and how Ser Clegane believes nothing is sweeter than killing. Her brother is fighting a war to get to her, and doesn’t deserve the news of another dead sister. “No,” she says. “The city will stand.”

Ser Clegane pulls himself to his feet, fits his wineskin to his side. “The people here aren’t your friends, little bird.”

_We’re all liars here, and every one of us is better than you._

 “No,” she says again, and he lets himself out.

The people in King’s Landing may not be her friends, but her family is coming for her. Even if the city stands now, winter is coming, and she doubts these soldiers know how to fight the cold.

 

 

Former Queen Robyn was declared dead only a few weeks ago, disappeared less than a year ago. Though Margaery had heard what people were saying, about how King Joffrey may rule the Seven Kingdoms but it was Queen Robyn who ruled him just as his grandparents, she hadn’t expected anything to come of it. She hadn’t expected to be met with such reluctance.  

Play to a man’s pride was the first lesson Grandmother taught her, but when she says, “I have come to love you from afar. Tales of your courage and wisdom have never been far from my ears, and those tales have taken root _deep_ inside of me,” he seems so incredibly disinterested it’s somewhat insulting.

 “I, too, have heard tales,” he says, “of your beauty and grace, My Lady. It would be an honor to accept your hand, but the period of mourning lasts another week before I can make a decision like this.”

By simply unfortunately timing, the siege of King’s Landing happened too early, but she can wait a few days if she must. The promise of an answer is given, and arrangements for where the Tyrell family will stay created. Margaery glances up at the balcony, where every woman’s eyes are focused on her—all but one, who looks instead to Joffrey.  Her hair is red, and twisted in the King’s Landing uncomfortable style on top her head, and her dress the darkest of anyone’s around her. This girl might not have tales of her own, but her sister certainly does. For that is Sansa Stark, and Margaery has never seen anyone look so unhappy.

 

 

Since Robb and Arya returned, Catelyn hasn’t had as much time with Jon as she did before, so she’s surprised when he just appears in her tent entrance one afternoon. “Have you seen the girls, Mother?” he asks, worried. “I haven’t seen either in a few hours. That’s not common these days.”

So either he doesn’t know yet, or he doesn’t understand. “Jon, sit,” she says, motioning to the chair across from her, and he does. “Arya is practicing archery with Theon and that Gendry boy this time of day. Robb is likely alone. Did she tell you about the raven?”

 “What raven?” he says, and she’s had it next to her since her daughter gave it to her, and Jon will hear eventually, so she passes it to him. His eyes skim it quickly before he adds, “Joffrey is marrying Margaery Tyrell? Wait, how didn’t I get this?”

 “Robb didn’t tell me how she got it first, but she did,” Catelyn answers. “Give her some time.”

Jon has never been married, and he’s not a woman, so he doesn’t understand the way Catelyn does. Ned may have been good to her in a way Joffrey certainly wasn’t good to Robb if her daughter’s reactions to people are any indication, but she still isn’t surprised that she left everyone for the day. Or perhaps Jon understands more than she thinks, or than he should, because he looks down at his lap and says, “He really hurt her, didn’t he? That’s why she’ll only let the three of us or Theon touch her. And why I can’t find her.”

When she was declared dead, she was almost relieved. Now there’s this. If Catelyn had to guess, Robb would have hated Joffrey in peace (as she claimed to) if she hadn’t been with child even for a short time. That connects two people in an unexpected way. “She’s just confused right now,” she tells him, as she promised her daughter to hide the truth. “Jon, when it comes to your own marriage with the Frey girl...don’t let this be your example of what arrangements are like.”

He peeks up at her through his hair, and looks much more like the little boy who ran around the halls of Winterfell than a king. “I don’t want to marry her,” he admits. “It’s not the girl herself, or even the arrangement. What I’ve heard of Walder Frey doesn’t make him sound like the sort of man whose House I want to be joined to.”

 “Past the wedding, you may never have to see him,” she says, and she thinks that might be the most logical reason to dislike an arranged marriage she’s ever heard. “Your father and I didn’t love each other in the beginning. We built it slowly over time.”

 “Do you really think that will happen?” He sounds doubtful, but he’s young, and she remembers feeling the same way. To her knowledge, he never loved another, so perhaps it will be an easier transition for him in the beginning.

As she doesn’t want to give him entirely unrealistic expectations, she answers, “It’s likely,” instead of yes. “You’re a good man, like your father was, and you will be much better to the Frey girl than Joffrey was to your sister.”

At least that he doesn’t seem so doubtful of, she supposes, and she wonders if Robb’s told him anything about her time in King’s Landing. Or maybe he knows the worse bits from Arya, like Catelyn does, because her youngest daughter hasn’t kept all the reasons Joffrey was horrible quiet.

Suddenly, he asks, “Why didn’t you hate me?” which comes as an unpleasant surprise.

Perhaps if he hadn’t been made King in the North, she would have told him, but after this, that just seems cruel. So even if it’s concealing another truth, she answers, “You were just a child. Whatever happened was no fault of yours. And you were too young to remember, but for two years I thought you were going to be all I had.” He doesn’t say anything right away, so she leans over and puts her hands over his. “I raised you. You’re my son as much as Bran or Rickon, and I couldn’t be more proud.”

In another life, he could have been heir to the Iron Throne, or at least in line for it. But now he’s succeeding from Westeros, a Stark rebel fighting against the man who would have seen him killed as a child had Ned nor intervened.

Perhaps it’s inevitable, she thinks, that someone saw fit to make him King.

 

 

Finding Robb alone is a rare thing, so the moment Theon sees her tearing at a blade of grass just out of sight of the camp, he’s worried. “I thought you were with Arya,” she says as he takes a seat next to her, laying his bow at his feet.

 “I was,” he says. “Then Gendry came out of nowhere and there went her concentration. What are you doing all the way out here?”

He knows all the signs of when she’s upset, and she clearly is. His first thought is a fight with Jon, but he dismisses it quickly; she would solve the issue then and there rather than run away. “It’s nothing,” she answers. “It’s stupid.”

That’s not something he hears a Stark say every day. “I doubt it’s as stupid as something of things I hear the men say.”

For a moment, she doesn’t say anything. Then, “Joffrey declared me dead. I never had a chance to speak with Sansa. What will she think?”

 “That you’re dead.” Theon likes her too much to try and pander. “There’s something else, isn’t there? Worrying over Sansa isn’t something you’d consider stupid.”

Again, she stays quiet, before saying, “He’s marrying Margaery Tyrell.”

 “While you’re still alive.”

 “I hadn’t thought this far ahead.” The broken blade of grass falls from her hand, and she sighs, pulling her knees to her chest. When he first came to Winterfell, she was the first person to try and befriend him, so he might not understand her as well as her brother, but he’d like to think he knows her well enough. “He really loved me. Had a terrible way of showing it, but he did. I hated him so much, no number of apologies could change that, but I don’t know—it feels cruel, in retrospect, making him think me dead. And how cruel it is to Sansa is unquestionable.”

To Sansa Theon can understand, but not to Joffrey. Regardless, “no number of apologies could change that” is pretty telling. He might not remember much of his first eight years in the Iron Islands, but it wasn’t a happy place. “It would be worse letting him think you ran away, even if it is the truth,” he says, though he doesn’t care about Joffrey’s happiness one way or the other and would honestly prefer him to be absolutely miserable, but she said it first.

 “Whatever’s happening to Sansa right now would probably worsen, too,” she says, and sighs. “I should probably be getting back. At least one person will be looking for me by now.”

He stands first, and holds out his hand to help her up. The scar on her palm is rough against his, and all he wants is for this war to end.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter gets Robb's point of view again, as well of other people's, because I fucked up and needed to add a chapter three.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dead girls are shockingly influential.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uh, winter comes early in this. Like really early.

Robb's issue is that she doesn’t hate Joffrey as much as she should, or thought she did.

Of course, she doesn’t tell anyone, least of all Jon as that simply wouldn’t be fair to him, but the feeling is still there. No, she hadn’t loved him, not in the least, but she didn’t particularly _dislike_ him either. As horrible as he was to her, there were moments where she enjoyed his company, and it’s no one’s fault but her own. She needed him to like to keep that marriage from being entirely awful; late night walks on the shoreline and having him allow her to help run the Seven Kingdoms hadn’t been part of the plan.

And he always, always, _always_ apologized, whether it was right after or days later. That didn’t make anything all right, but clearly it was enough to confuse her. It took her leaving and losing the child she didn’t realize she had for her to admit maybe she spent her time in King’s Landing trying to convince herself she hated him rather than actual hating him.

She thinks Theon and Mother may know, though she’s never directly spoken of it. If she’s lucky, hopefully her brother won’t notice, too. She _cared_ for Joffrey, but she _loves_ Jon, and there’s a distinct difference. He’d never hurt her, or at least not intentionally, just as she would never hurt him. There’s a deadline once again to everything they have with his marriage to the Frey girl, but she can avoid thinking on that for now. After King’s Landing, she’s remarkably good at ignoring her thoughts, even when she feels caught somewhere between Robb and Robyn and even little Lyanna Waters the orphan girl.

Now Joffrey’s marrying Margaery Tyrell of High Garden, though, and it’s bothering Robb more than it should. She wonders who arranged it, and if he wanted it, and why it took so long for him to declare her dead.

 

 

The moment she has the opportunity, Cersei sees her father alone. Fighting with Joffrey about the Tyrell girl was an exhausting experience, and all she’s been hearing since then are whispers of pity for the new betrothed. Everyone likes a good love story, she understands that, but she was hoping the new marriage would stop people from talking, since apparently a year’s time hasn’t been enough.

Apparently even the beauty Lady Margaery isn’t enough, either.

To her relief, Father agrees. “Robyn Stark played everyone for fools,” he says as he takes a seat across the desk from her. “She was Queen for a month a year ago. Why did you let her make such a mess that we’re still feeling the effects?”

“Because she played Joffrey for a fool more than anyone else,” Cersei answers. “If Lady Margaery tries to get him to like her, I doubt it will work. Our Little Wolf dug her claws in deep.”

Having a Tyrell in power is not as bad as a Stark, though not by much, and she doesn’t believe for a moment the girl is as innocent as she pretends. Still, the sooner Robyn’s influence is completely erased the better. “Do we have any word yet of who captured her?”

Shaking her head, Cersei answers, “No. There were too many signs of a struggle for it to be one of her brother’s men, though. She never stopped being loyal to him. They would have taken Sansa, too.”

“If it were Renly, we would know about it,” Father says. “That leaves Stannis, or this Brotherhood without Banners I can’t seem to get any information on. Is there any way she could have staged an escape herself?”

While the thought had occurred to Cersei when she first heard it, she dismissed the idea quickly. “No,” she says again. “She was with child at the time. No woman would risk that.”

“And you’re sure she was?”

“Yes.” When a woman bleeds, she doesn’t wear white. There is no code of conduct for it, but an accepted sign of femininity men are unaware of because the last thing anyone wants is to be questioned on why there’s suddenly blood on the back of her skirt.  And Robyn wore white her entire final month.

Father laces his fingers together over the desk. “Well, if there was one good idea she had, it was what to do with Baelish. Others might say he’s a magician, I say he puts us further in debt, and with the Stark host burning through our supplies in the Westerlands and winter coming, that’s something we should avoid.”

“She already gave him Harrenhal,” Cersei says. “You want to give Petyr Baelish the Vale?” In the beginning, she convinced Joffrey to keep the man on the Small Council because she’s been Queen longer than Robyn has and understands a lesson the girl doesn’t—it’s better to keep your enemies close. Now that he’s said he knows about her and Jaime, or at least guessed, and her father is here, she doesn’t mind the idea of spiriting him away.

“It adds Catelyn Stark’s sister to the list of people allied against her,” he answers. “I’ll announce it tomorrow at the Small Council meeting.”

Though she wants to ask who the new Master of Coin will be, Cersei is old enough to know when she’s being dismissed. “Tomorrow, then, Father,” she says as she stands, and wonders how they reached the point where a decision Robyn Stark made a year ago is considered a good one.

 

 

By now, Arya thought she had seen a lot, but too late Robb covers her eyes and drags her outside the gates of Harrenhal. “Just—watch her,” she tells Gendry, who followed, as if Arya were a child, and perhaps twelve should be, but she doesn’t feel like one anymore. Her friend’s forehead is knit with concern and thinly veiled disgust, and she doesn’t have time to protest when her sister slips back inside after Mother. After Jon.

If Arya shouldn’t see it, she doesn’t understand why Robb should. She knows what’s going to haunt her dreams tonight. “Those were Northerners,” she says, looking to Gendry,  and a crowd of field nurses are suddenly pushed out as well. “I might know people in there.”

It’s a frightening thought, and there’s not much she’s frightened by. “That was the Lannisters, wasn’t it?” he answers, watching the field nurses all circle around each other talking. It’s been not five minutes and already Arya wishes they hadn’t come here, that they’d known somehow that there was no battle waiting for them.

Nodding, she says, “Tywin Lannister. I heard Jon.” She never spoke to the man, and saw him only briefly at her sister’s wedding, but she does know he’s the dangerous one. “They might be in there all night giving them proper burials and checking for survivors.”

Gendry’s eyes search the charred walls, and she remembers all the stories about how this place is cursed. She’s not what she’d consider superstitious, but there are still corpses piled on top of each other in there. “I don’t think there are any survivors, Arya.”

No, neither does she, and perhaps that’s better for them. And if she’s going to be stuck out here all night, she’s glad Gendry’s with her, because she’d rather hear his voice than the wind rattling through the castle’s ruined halls.

 

 

Until Margaery Tyrell came to King’s Landing, Cersei never thought she would actually miss Robyn. Of course, she’d prefer to have neither, but if she _has_ to have one or the other, she rather the Stark girl. At least she was didn’t dress like a whore and hide behind the smallfolk when she wanted attention.

She was also unapologetically honest right until the point her father’s life was in danger.

It was also not until she was gone that Cersei could see that what people say is true—her son loved his late wife. This isn’t the first time she’s seen the similarity between Robyn and her late aunt, but it is the first time Cersei realizes that for every Lady Stark there’s a Lady Lannister, and Margaery is certainly the more beautiful of the two.

Which is why one day, not longer after the girl arrives, Cersei takes Lady Margaery by the arm around the garden, now swarming with Tyrell women. “I used to walk here with Robyn Stark,” Cersei tells her, because she needs her to understand. Joffrey has been hurt enough; he doesn’t need someone new to come and pick at old wounds. “The King can’t devote all his time to his wife, of course.”

Not that Robyn particularly enjoyed the walks, but the Lady Margaery doesn’t need to know that. “Oh, I imagine not, Your Grace,” she says. “The finer points of politics might elude me, but—”

“Do you know the story of Lyanna Stark, Lady Margaery?” Cersei interrupts, not wanting to listen to the girl’s blabbering. “No, don’t answer that, every highborn knows the tragedy of the Lady of Winterfell. Tomorrow the King leaves for a hunt.”

With a smile, Lady Margaery answers, “Yes, Your Grace. My brother Loras leaves with him.”

“Find Sansa Stark,” Cersei says, because she needs to learn who she is before she makes the same mistake. “Ask her why King Robert arranged a marriage between Joffrey and her sister.”

Lady Margaery doesn’t have her sympathy, appreciation, and barely her tolerance. But Cersei wants her to learn her place anyway because if Robyn had, perhaps she wouldn’t be missing and Joffrey’s heart broken. She can allow the girl this one small kindness, at the very least.

 

 

“Jon?”

“Yes?”

Robb moves closer next to him under the comfort of their furs, as they’re now far away from Harrenhal and on the road to Riverrun. “When the war ends and you marry the Frey girl, this has to stop,” she says, which is just about the last thing he needs to hear after having sex for the first time. “I don’t want to remarry.”

The North’s way is the old way. She wonders what she would say if she knew he wants to marry her instead. “I know,” he says, and it’s an answer to both.

And she must know it too, for all she does is kiss him once, and pull the furs to their chins.

 

 

On normal occasions, Margaery’s first instincts would not be to follow to advice of a woman who so obviously hates her. But she’s been in King’s Landing for quite some time now, has already made an impression with the smallfolk, _thought_ she was making an impression on Joffrey (she’s not, clearly), and is still living under the ghost of Robyn Stark. She doesn’t fault the girl for it—rather admires her, really—but it makes establishing herself difficult, so she thinks that perhaps she should do something about the Queen’s vague hint. There must have been a reason for it and, more importantly, young Sansa does know Joffrey better than she or her grandmother do.

They charm the poor girl with lemon cakes, such a terribly simple sweet to have as her favorite, and invite her to sit. It takes some time, and a bit of embarrassing talk from Grandmother, but eventually Sansa relents and tells them of Joffrey. Margaery has never pitied anyone so quickly in her life, even if the direwolf Lady who followed her here is just the slightest bit intimidating.

As some of the fear gives way, Sansa says, “My father always told the truth.”

“Yes, he had the reputation,” Grandmother says, “and they named him ‘traitor’ and took his head—”

For the first time since she came to them, the girl makes eye contact. “Joffrey,” she says, and the wolf whines almost as if she’s agreeing. “ _Joffrey_ did that. He promised he would be merciful, and he cut my father’s head off, and he said that was mercy. And he took me up on the walls and made me look at it, all because he thinks it was Jon that took my sister.”

The resolves wanes. Margaery waits for a moment to see if it will return before saying, “Go on.”

“No, I never meant,” Sansa continues quickly. “My father was a traitor, my brother as well, please don’t make me say any more.”

“She’s terrified, Grandmother. Just look at her.” And she is, this girl who can’t be much older than fourteen, kept away here away from her family. At least Margaery came by choice.

But Grandmother is undaunted. “Speak freely, child. We would never betray your confidence, I swear it.”

Another moment of tense silence passes before Sansa looks up and tells them, “He’s a monster. Robb—Robyn, he’d hurt her, and then he and Lad—Queen Cersei wouldn’t let us see each other alone from the time Father was taken to the time she was taken. He loved her, and showed everyone that by killing her father and going to war with her brother.”

By now, Margaery has learned that all those rumors of the King and Queen’s great love story are perhaps not so false after all, though it sounds as if whether or not Robyn Stark loved her husband is debatable. “I know you must want to stop,” Margaery says, because she might as well finish what she started, “but I have one final question.”

“What is it?”

A serving boy comes by with the cheese, and once he’s left, she answers, “The Queen came to me. She said there was a reason her late husband arranged the match between your sister and King Joffrey. She said it had to do with Lyanna Stark.”

Sansa, though young, is apparently not as foolish as she looks. “Did the Queen tell you to speak with me?”

“No, of course not, child,” Grandmother says before Margaery can answer. “But it was a rather cryptic statement to give on a garden stroll. We wanted to ask you about Joffrey, and I think this might have something to do with him.”

“Robert loved Lyanna,” Sansa says, and then gives Margaery a very uncomfortable look that can mean nothing good. “He wanted her as his wife. When Rhaegar Targaryen took her, Robert and my father began a war to get her back, but she died. He married Queen Cersei instead. My sister said the only reasons he wanted her to marry Joffrey was because he couldn’t have Lyanna.”

Like the Queen said, all highborns know the story of Lyanna Stark, and Margaery has heard tales of her own about Joffrey and his sibling’s true parentage, and no one would do that unless they truly hated their spouse. But Sansa’s story casts a new light on an old tale. Everything was right in front of her, and it takes until now for Margaery to understand what the Queen was trying to tell her.

For if Robyn is Lyanna Stark, then Margaery is Cersei Lannister, and there are few people in the world she’d like less to be compared to.

 

 

As they never wanted to risk sending any ravens, her Riverrun family had yet to learn about her. “Y-you’re alive!” Uncle Edmure says when sees, and before she can answer, Great Uncle Brynden has her swept up in a hug.

“You’ve grown!” he says, putting her down, and Uncle Edmure hugs her too. Mother is smiling, eyes turned to the group, and it’s a bit ironic that she’s essentially returned from the dead at a funeral.

“Of course she’s grown,” Mother says from behind him. “It’s been seven years since you’ve seen any of them.”

At the time, she’d been ten, dresses always a bit too short because she was growing so fast, and practicing swordplay with Jon. Now she’s a women grown and wed, supposedly having died, and every person who points out she isn’t is just another person reminding her that Sansa doesn’t know.

 

 

After the funeral, and after Jon finds out about Lord Edmure’s mistake, he sits with Robb in the room acting as hers and together they craft a letter to Stannis. “We need a secondary plan,” she says as she crumples up the third slip of paper in a row because this is more difficult than they imagined. But at least she says _we_ again with ease now. “Not to mention that after the siege of King’s Landing, his numbers must be severely depleted.”

Yes, the same thought had crossed his mind as well. They don’t know exactly how many men Lord Stannis lost, but it must have been a large number for him to retreat. “We aren’t doing particularly well in that respect ourselves,” he says. “Lord Edmure just lost over two hundred in one battle, the most casualties at once since the distraction force I sent into Lord Tywin’s camp for the first one.”

As she pushes her hair from her face, Robb says, “Is there any way to get more men? We can’t go to my Aunt Lysa, I signed her away to Baelish and that will go through eventually now that we’re burning Lannister camps and supplies and Lord Tywin has returned to King’s Landing. Someone so careful with money won’t want a man like that around.”

According to Mother, her sister refused to help when he initially called the banners. Even without Lord Baelish’s influence, Jon doesn’t think her decision would change in the course of a year. “The only man with the numbers allied with us is Walder Frey,” he says, uncomfortable with it already. “There’s a possibility that he might…”

Robb sighs, and lays down the quill. “It’s for Sansa,” she says, and Jon knows this, but he has a bad feeling about returning to the Twins. “I don’t like it any better than you do, but if we need the men, is there anything else?”

Unfortunately, there isn’t, not without returning north, and the men are restless enough as it is. And winter isn’t waiting for the war to end. “Tell Stannis to meet us at the Twins,” he says, and kisses the side of her head. “He can have the Iron Throne once we have our sister back. Do you want me to leave?”

“No, and we can finish this in the morning since you need to send a letter to Walder Frey, too,” she answers, and brushes her hair from her face. “You love me. I love you. It wasn’t fair to Joffrey, it won’t be fair to your new wife, but we both know you’re going to do what’s right. But when I was betrothed to the Prince of Westeros, we didn’t stop until the day before my wedding, so I don’t see the purpose in keeping each other at a distance for at least another fortnight.”

No, it won’t be fair, because no matter Mother says, he won’t grow to love someone the way he loves Robb. Just like he knows the North will never bow to some girl from the Twins.

In the end, his sister has more experience than any of them, and it doesn’t matter that she won’t bear the title or the crown; it’s Robb their people will look to as their Queen.

 

 

Joffrey makes it a point not discuss his late wife, but allows his mother to sit him down anyway the day before he _must_ tour Margaery around. As she’s to be the new Queen, they need to get to know each other, but as of now they’ve never even been alone with each other.

“Tomorrow we’re all going to be in the Sept while I discuss the wedding with Lady Olenna, as you know,” Mother says, and he wants to talk of the war with Jon Stark, not his coming marriage. “Joffrey, Robyn was an unusual girl. For most women, explaining the deaths of the Targaryens is a bit…macabre. It would be best to refrain from doing so again.”

Showing Robyn around the Sept, and then eventually the dragon skulls later that day, was one of the first things they did together in King’s Landing. He doesn’t particularly want to repeat that with Lady Margaery to begin with. “Do I have to marry her?”

Suddenly he doesn’t feel much like a king anymore. Robyn was the only person to tell him even kings had their restrictions, and all he did in return was lash out. At the time, he hadn’t realized it was true. “We’re at war, and it’s a good alliance,” Mother answers. “She’s very beautiful, and if you want, you only need to see her when it’s time to make an heir. You’re King. She can sleep in a separate room.”

She and Father slept in separate rooms, and Joffrey hadn’t known married couples shared one until he was wed himself. “Robyn wanted to name the child Jaime if we had a boy,” he says a year too late, because that’s his uncle, and he knows Mother might expect him to use it for one of his children. “I won’t use Jaime if I have a boy with Lady Margaery.”

“ _Robyn_ suggested a Lannister name?”

“Robert is too close to hers, we couldn’t use that,” he says. “Her father was a traitor. We already decided on Lyarra for a girl, and Joanna if we had another one. She hated Steffon and Tywin, and I didn’t want two Stark names, so she said she wanted Jaime. It’s better than _Rickard._ ”

Honestly, he didn’t care one way or the other about the sound of names. He just didn’t want his child named after a traitor, and it took her long enough to convince him of Lyarra. In the end, he only agreed because he wanted her shut up about it. “Well, the time for deciding any of that won’t come for some time,” Mother says, and sits straighter in her chair. “Just remember that girls like Lady Margaery prefer walks through the gardens than walks through the crypts. Wolves are harsher than roses.”

Robyn never felt harsh. Insolent and out of turn, but certainly not harsh. But maybe that’s what women and smallfolk saw her as, and Lady Margaery is seeming less interesting by the minute.

 

 

Quick enough, Sansa learns that Margaery is incredibly kind, and that changes _everything._ “If I were to marry Loras,” she asks the day after the plans are first suggested, “would he allow me to visit Winterfell to see my family? Bran, the second youngest, he fell while climbing. The last I saw him, he was still unconscious in bed.”

As Margaery takes her by the arm, she answers, “Of course. I’m sure your family is very worried about you, too.”

One of the reasons Jon began this war was to free her from King’s Landing. Worried is an understatement, Sansa thinks. “I miss the snow,” she says. “Though winter is coming. I supposed it won’t be long before even Dorne sees it.”

“It’s been so long since the last winter I barely remember the snow,” her friend says. “Is it true the North regularly sees summer snows?” She nods. “It must be beautiful.”

Before she even thinks to stop herself, Sansa begins Margaery of her final day in Winterfell, of Arya trying to build a snowball and Robb and Jon with matching snowflakes caught in their curls. Her new friends listens to all of it with an earnest Sansa doesn’t expect, and by the end, she feels lighter than she has in months.

 

 

Though she knows her family had originally wanted a marriage between Sansa and Loras for the girl’s potential claim to the North should anything happen to her brother, Margaery genuinely wanted to see her new friend somewhere safe, if not necessarily happy. After everything the Lannisters have put her through, she deserves that, at least.

So when she discovers Lord Tywin’s plan to marry Sansa to Tyrion Lannister instead, she thinks her anger is justifiable. “We were very careful to never discuss it unless we knew we were in private,” Margaery says when she confronts Loras, for she knows neither Grandmother nor Sansa would have told anyone of it. “Who did you complain to?”

“I’m sorry,” he answers, not bothering to deny it. “I hadn’t known. I just…wasn’t too thrilled at the idea of marrying the girl, I suppose.”

“Well, I hope your happy, then, Loras,” she says. “Instead of _the girl_ , you’re to marry Lady Cersei instead.”

When she’s Queen, that’s probably an arrangement she could stop. At the moment, though, she’s a little too angry with him to even think of doing that. And from the look on her brother’s face, it’s clear he knows it, too.

 

 

Jon Stark’s letter comes tied to the leg of a raven and written in a women’s hand. After Stannis reads it aloud to her and Ser Davos, Melisandre throws the letter in the fire, and the flames show her wolves and snow.

Convincing Stannis that this is the only way is difficult, as the North wants to secede, but with Ser Davos’ help she manages. “And we must hurry, My King,” she says once it’s done. “If we don’t reach the Twins in time, there will be no Jon Stark left to negotiate with.”

This is a world of traitors, and the Starks are about to walk into a trap.

 

 

Having sex with Jon isn’t like it was with Joffrey. He’s gentler with her, takes care not to her and that it feels good for her as well as him. In a few days’ time, Roslin Frey, the woman chosen to be his wife, is going to be luckier than she knows.

When Robb left him the first time, it had been hard, but this time it feels even worse, and she wonders if this is why. “What are we going to do tomorrow?” she asks, though her brother is half asleep already. “With Walder Frey. What are we going to do about me?”

He blinks his eyes open and focus on her as she adjusts herself into a more comfortable position to talk. “We’ll I can’t hide you,” he answers, and runs the backs of his fingers lightly up and down her arm. “I’m going to be related to him in a few days.”

While neither of them have ever met Walder Frey, Mother has said enough about him for them to know he’s not the sort of man someone wants to associate with. She just hopes having his daughter as Queen in the North will be enough to stop him from sending a raven to Joffrey, because that will certainly put him in the Lannisters’ favor. “I’ll have to sleep in my own tent from now on,” she says. “Or with Arya, since I doubt we have the space.”

Until now, the few people who pay attention to their comings and goings seem to just assume she’s too afraid to be on her own after whatever they think Joffrey must have done to her. They’re also Northerners, and it’s not terribly uncommon for siblings to share a bed even into their young adulthood—after all, they’re a land of summer snows, sometimes the extra warmth is just necessary. In Winterfell it was never needed, really, with their large hearths and thick furs, but the cold once again worked in their favor. And once again, that favor won’t last forever.

The movement of his hand stalls. “Is Roslin going to expect to come with us?”

“Jon, even if she doesn’t, you’ll be married,” Robb answers. “You can’t share a bed with your sister, even if we do stop everything else.”

When he sits up, he brings her with him, though she was only half on him to begin with. Ghost lifts his head to look at from his place by the door at the movement, but goes back to resting the moment he realizes nothing is wrong. “You and Arya will stay together then,” he says, and moves her hair away from her face. It’s loose, unbraided, and she hasn’t played with her fraying ribbon in a month. “But the Frey girl won’t come with us. It’s not—safe, I suppose, and I’m just—”

“Not ready?” He nods, and she understands. She’s not ready, either. “When we go to King’s Landing, I want a chance to talk to Joffrey. Alone.”

“What? What brought this on?” he says. “Why would you ever want to be on your own with him again?”

It’s something she’d been thinking of for a while, actually, and now they’re speaking of separating, which makes it as good a time as any to bring it up. Unfortunately, she doesn’t have a very good explanation. “I chose you over him. I chose our family over my husband’s,” she answers, “but we were still married for a year. Regardless of any ill feelings I have towards him, he still deserves an apology that his wife ran away and made him think she were dead. Sansa deserves a similar one. She won’t be happy with me.”

If her sister is happy to see her after this, Robb will be legitimately surprised. She’s under no illusions about what she did—she _abandoned_ Sansa in King’s Landing, when she could have stayed and fixed it all. Jon, though, clearly disagrees, because he says, “I doubt it, at least at first. She’ll probably just be glad to find her family alive. I’ll let you talk to Joffrey. He’ll just be made immobile beforehand so I know he can’t hurt you.”

“All right,” she says, knowing she won’t get any more than that. “So with Stannis, you’ll take King’s Landing, win this war, and return to the North where you’ll rule a newly autonomous nation just at the start of winter. Cheery.”

For a moment he just sort of looks at her, confused. Then he says, “You said ‘you.’”

She realizes her mistake instantly, though she’s surprised Jon did, too. “Oh. Sorry.”

“Is it Roslin, or Joffrey?”

“I’m just tired,” she answers honestly. “It’s been a long two years, and I don’t know if I can do this again.”

 He’s exhausted too, no matter how well he hides it from the others. It’s always present in the dark smudges under his eyes, and the tightness around his mouth. For both of them, the exhaustion goes deeper than a physical level. “I know,” he says, and pauses before adding, “Do you regret it?”

Shaking her head, she says, “No,” because that’s true, too. “I’ve said it before, Jon—I love you. Nothing is ever going to change that. I’m yours.”

More than once Joffrey claimed she was his and while she cared for him a great deal more than she should have, those words were only ever intended for her brother. He means _everything_ to her, and now she needs to let him go a second time. How can she do this for a second time? After her wedding, she was distracted with forcing a relationship to work and, eventually, running a country while trying to keep her family alive. This time there are no distractions, and she doubts Roslin Frey will be as difficult as Joffrey.

Jon kisses her forehead. “Yes, you’re mine,” he says, “and I’m yours.”

 

 

On a warm autumn afternoon, Tyrion Lannister drapes a cloak over Sansa’s shoulders. She thinks of her sister’s wedding, and of Joffrey declaring his love for her in front of everyone.

Tyrion does nothing of the sort, and Sansa thinks it’s probably better that way.

 

 

“I heard you were dead, Lady Stark.”

“I apologize if it comes as a disappointment, but I happen to be very much alive, Lord Frey. And it’s still ‘Your Grace.’”

While Arya snickers into her hand and Jon fights back a smile, Catelyn would much rather hide her daughter from the world at the moment. Walder Frey is leering in his seat, squinting for a better view, but doesn’t request she move closer. Supposedly deceased or not, until the point Joffrey marries Lady Margaery, Robb is still a queen. And even after, a princess. But Lord Frey isn’t known for his manners.

“Yes, you’re very pretty, Your Grace,” Walder Frey says, and Jon isn’t close to smiling now. “You’ll make my Roslin jealous, I fear. Well,  I have enough room in the hall for you lot. We’ll set up tents outside with food and ale for your men.”

Jon thanks him for his hospitality, and the moment is tense and uncomfortable. Catelyn is ready for this to be over.

 

 

Outside, Gendry is with the men, watching Ghost and Nymeria, because they have no justifiable reason for him being inside with them, and after a lot of wheedling, Arya is allowed to join him. As Jon was forced to sit through her wedding, Robb knows it’s only fair she sits through his, but she can’t help but wish she was with her sister and friend instead. Her only real comfort in this is Theon, who squeezes her hand in sympathy when Roslin and her brother kiss.

She says, “The North has a queen.”

“Yes, it seems we do,” her friend answers, and she’s never felt so separate from everyone as she does now.

 

 

He’s trying to hold a conversation with his new wife when Robb’s voice suddenly comes from across the hall, “Jon, get down!”

This is his sister, and he moves without question, and the arrow moves straight over his head. Roslin isn’t as lucky, and by the time he looks up, she’s already dead, a dark shaft and darker feathers sticking from her chest. Walder Frey is shouting something, and Jon will think on it later, but now he ducks under the table to avoid another arrow and comes out the other side, trying to make a run to his family and his lords. Some have weapons, including Theon, presumably nicked off attackers, and Robb somehow got her hands on a knife.

Somewhere beyond those locked wooden doors, Nymeria howls loud enough for them to hear. Mother has an arrow in her thigh, and a knife to Lady Frey’s throat, pleading for Walder Frey to let them leave. “They are my children,” she’s saying, and the whole room’s gone still. “Let them go, and I swear we will forget this. I swear it by the old gods and the new, we will take no vengeance—”

“You already swore me an oath,” Frey answers, “and now my daughter’s dead—”

“Just take me as your hostage—”

“Mother!”

“Let my children go.” She turns, face tight with pain. “Theon, take them out of here. Drag them if you have to—”

Jon’s already moving to helping her, but then Theon’s got a grip on Robb’s arm. Mother appealed to the right person. “And why,” Walder Frey says, “would I do that?”

Then mother turns again. “I promise on my honor as a Tully, on my honor as a Stark. Let them go, or I’ll cut your wife’s throat.”

Too late does Jon see the man moving from under the table, and Robb and Theon are facing the wrong way. “Mother,” he starts, just as Walder Frey answers, “I’ll just get another,” and before Jon can so much as move, one of Frey’s son’s slits Catelyn Tully’s throat, saying, “The Lannisters send their regards.”

As she falls, Jon sees Frey’s wife’s throat really is cut too, but before he can react, Roose Bolton is in front of him, with a knife pressed to his chest. And before he can react to that, either, Robb’s voice comes from the side, “Move, and I kill myself.”

Again, the hall falls silent. Jon should be looking to his sister, but his eyes are focused on the woman who raised him when she had no obligation to crumbled on the floor, and he can’t believe it. Clearly, though, Robb pieced something together he hadn’t. “You think we won’t kill you already, _Your Grace?_ ”

“No, because Joffrey would never see me dead without first speaking to me. He loves me far too much for that,” she answers, and sounds more confident than Jon thought she could. Finally he tears his eyes away from Mother and finds Robb with her knife pressed to the pulse in her neck. “But you haven’t told them about me in any of your correspondence, have you? Or there would be a Lannister army on our doorstep, not a ragtag team of turncloaks. You were planning on returning me and saying you saved me, were you not? Gain the North as yours in return? See who’s faster, Lord Bolton, your men or me.”

Roose Bolton’s moment of hesitation gives Jon just enough time to back away, kick in his knee, and use his pain to disarm him. Both Theon and Robb stab the men next to them as Jon slides the knife through Bolton’s ribs, and uses his body as protection against the arrows still raining from the balconies. The loyal lords still alive seem to have gotten themselves under the table, which Robb does as well. And just when Jon thinks they haven’t done anything to get themselves out of the situation at all, the doors burst open, and in storms his men, Nymeria and Ghost, and _Stannis Baratheon._

After the archers are shot and the rest of the living men cornered, the loyal ones emerge from the tables, and Jon and Theon drop the corpses they were using as shields. At the table is the woman who was Queen in the North for not more than two hours, pinned to the back of her chair by an arrow, and Robb’s arms are around his neck, uncaring for the company that just came to their rescue.

“Negotiations can wait,” King Stannis says. “Tell me what I can do to help, Jon Stark.”

Before he can say anything, his sister answers, “He needs medical assistances,” and Jon realizes there’s blood dripping down his side. “I’m Robyn Stark, yes, I am alive, and I can handle anything necessary in the meantime.”

Mother is dead, and one of his lords just betrayed him. There will be time to grieve, but for now he needs to be a king. Robb shouldn’t have to deal with it.

Unfortunately, until whatever wound he has is bandaged, she’ll have to, and he just hopes his siblings will forgive the bastard brother who got both their parents killed.

 

 

For months now, she has been Robb Stark again. Now she sheds that identity for a short time and becomes Queen Robyn again, because Mother is dead and Jon injured, Arya traumatized by the news, and the North in need of someone to deal with their dead. If there’s one thing she excels at, it’s fooling everyone into thinking she has the faintest idea of what she’s doing.

With the help of Stannis’ men, the Northerners separate the Stark dead from the Tully, who will be sent back to families and who will receive Riverlands burials now. By some miracle, both Uncle Brynden and Uncle Edmure are alive, and Mother’s boat is arranged, but her funeral will wait for Jon. Walder Frey and the other oath breakers are bound and imprisoned until the point there is time to deal with them, and this time they won’t be sent to the Wall. This was no act of war. This was a direct violation of the promise of safety under one’s roof, the sworn oath of hospitality. And it’s Tully land, not Stark, so she allows her uncles to handle every excecution but Lord Frey’s, and the man who killed her mother.

Only after this is done does she have enough time to speak with King Stannis, his Hand, and the Lady Melisandre. As it happens, Theon was injured too, and she’s too wary around anyone else after this, so she talks to them alone. “I’m the one who learned of the relationship between Lady Cersei and Ser Jaime, and the illegitimacy of Robert’s children,” she says once they all take their seats around a table in the war council tent. “My father kept that from the raven he sent. The Iron Throne is yours by right, but my brother’s men declared him king, he didn’t decide to be without prompting as Renly did. I’m the reason you know your claim. It’s only fair you return the favor, Your Grace.”

Under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t be this forward, and Jon certainly won’t be, but this is far from what she would consider “normal.” Considering that King Stannis doesn’t seem particularly angered, he must understand that. “Your brother won’t contest me for the Iron Throne, Lady Robyn?”

“Ruling Westeros is the last thing he wants,” she answers. “King’s Landing isn’t his home. But the details of his rule aren’t mine to discuss, Your Grace. If you would be so kind, I wish to discuss the fate of the Lannister children, illegitimate or otherwise.”

Ser Davos and Lady Melisandre exchange an apprehensive look, which is odd, as she had a feeling they weren’t too fond of each other. “The young ones aren’t to be touched, if that’s what you’re worried about, Lady Robyn,” King Stannis answered. “I’m not Tywin Lannister.”

No one other than Lord Tywin could have ordered this, she knows that. Joffrey wouldn’t think of it, and Cersei is cruel, but not cruel enough to pass something as bold as this through the Small Council. “Both Tommen and Myrcella have the proper educations of lords and ladies,” she says, “They’re about to have no family, and they’re only children. What are you going to do with them?”

“Are you—worried about them, Lady Stark?” Ser Davos asks, and sounds surprised.

She thinks of Myrcella’s warm, bright smiles on sunny mornings, of Tommen chasing his kittens through the halls, and answers, “They’re sweet children, Your Grace, unlike their parents and brother, and for a short while I did live as their sister. Yes, I’m worried, but no one will take kindly to us bringing them to the North. Last I heard Myrcella in Dorne, but that still leaves Tommen.”

After a moment of silence, King Stannis says, “As I said, they won’t be harmed. That means I won’t exile them either. Between now and the battle for King’s Landing, we will have time to think of their fate. Now, you mentioned in your letter that you knew a way into the Red Keep?”

For the next half hour she explains what she told the Northern lords months ago, and Lady Melisandre and King Stannis help her draw a diagram. Jon joins them towards the end, pale faced but healthy enough, and in one talk gains Northern autonomy.

Robb just wants to go home.

 

 

Though Robb hasn’t shot an arrow in a while, she can still do it, and Jon lets her for Mother’s funeral. He lies and says it’s because of his side, that he doesn’t want to risk missing as Uncle Edmure did, but truthfully it’s just that he would feel wrong doing it. Weeks ago, she called him her son, and said she was proud, but that still doesn’t make him her blood. He could have been raised a Snow, a shadow in Winterfell ignored and hated, and he will never stop being grateful for that. Still, it’s Robb he hands the bow.

She lights the boat on her first try before it’s too far away for her to risk missing and next to him, Arya doesn’t cry. Nymeria howls in one long note, loud and long, and Jon thinks that maybe in the end Mother became as much a real Stark as he did. For Starks are all wolves in the end, and they howl when they’re apart.

When Robb hands Theon back his bow and takes her place in line to watch the boats all drift down the river, their friend takes her hand. She doesn’t look at Jon, and he doesn’t look at her because his wife his dead, and he can’t get out of his head what she told Bolton.

_He loves me far too much for that._

Jon knew Joffrey had hurt his sister. He just hadn’t thought it was like that.

 

 

By the time Tyrion comes to her with news of her mother, she’s already heard it. “Your brother is safe, though,” he says in a way that implies he understands that doesn’t make up for it, but doesn’t make it worse, either. She wonders of Theon, who’s not family and therefore will receive no mention in a letter about the Stark dead. “He’s also allied with Lord Stannis.”

“Will they attack King’s Landing again?”

“Yes. And soon, I think.”

He doesn’t ask her if she wants that, and she does. Perhaps Cersei was right about Stannis alone, but she is Sansa Stark of Winterfell, all she needs to do is shout her name and no Northerner will harm her. And this time she’ll stay in her room with Lady, who now prowls protectively at her feet, instead of downstairs with the other ladies because she’s not risking Ser Ilyn slitting her throat before Jon can reach her. “So my brother’s married now?”

Shaking his head, her husband answers, “It seems as though she’s dead, too.”

In the North, she never paid much attention to the comings and goings of lords, but she does know everyone’s sigils and words. She hopes Jon gives Dreadfort over to someone else who will change both, for who can trust a man whose sigil is a flayed man? Killed at a wedding. Tywin Lannister wasn’t just attempting to kill her brother. He made people distrust oaths of safety, too.  

She hopes when it comes time for his execution, she’s there, and this time she won’t swoon at the sight of it.

 

 

Ever since Robyn left, it seems as though the Small Council can never agree on anything, and Tyrion’s little trick with Myrcella’s marriage hadn’t helped matters. The failed aftermath of the wedding only seems to have made things worse and once again Cersei finds herself talking to her father alone.

“Guests will begin arriving for Joffrey’s wedding within the week,” she says, taking the seat across from him. “A week still gives us time to send ravens to delay them.”

Father looks up from whatever he’s scribbling. “And why would we do that?”

If Jon Stark had died, perhaps she would have agreed with his decision, but as it stands they have angry Northerners joined with an angry Stannis Baratheon marching on them. There are Northerners in King’s Landing, too, who must have known Lady Catelyn, and now she’s dead as well as her daughter. Cersei can recognize a failure when she sees it. “The wedding should take place after the war is through, when we’re at peace,” she says. “You had a wedding turned into a trap. If any Stark loyalist wanted to attack Joffrey, his own wedding seems an appropriate enough time to do it.”

Putting down his quill, Father says, “You know as well as I do this wedding will be one of the most heavily guarded events King’s Landing has seen in years. Jon Stark and Stannis Baratheon are marching on us closer by the day. We need the alliance with the Tyrells solidified.”

“The promise of marriage after the war is at its end should be enough.”  Perhaps Joffrey will be less resistant to the wedding, too. As of now, he’s too preoccupied with the thought of crushing the two armies, as it seems only one or the other could have taken his late wife. If they wait, they’ll have Jaime back by that time, too.

But her father isn’t swayed. “If we cancel the wedding, a promise won’t be a good enough substitute,” he says. “We’re Lannisters, we said we’d repay them for coming to our aid during our last siege, and we always pay our debts.”

Yes, yes, she knows that. She’s said it enough herself. “And what debt did we owe Jon Stark that was severe enough to lock him in a room and slaughter him?”

“We’ve been at war with the boy for two years, Cersei,” he answers. “He’s got an aptitude for it we didn’t expect. His father trained him well. It’s better to kill a few people at a wedding than it is to lose thousands of lives in open at battle.”

That’s just an excuse, though, one of those lies men tell themselves to justify their actions. She always saw her father so fearless, thought he could never lose, but here he is now, afraid of a boy. Once again, a Stark disappearance sparked a war, and Father’s not going to be able to kill a family by locking them in a room with a traitor as an answer to his problem. Jon Stark isn’t some mad king he can stab in the back.

Standing, Cersei says, “More than just Lannister’s pay their debts, Father.  If any of my children are hurt as a result of this, then I swear to you that before the month is through, you’ll be on the road back to Casterly Rock with or without Joffrey directive.”

He goes to say something, but she’s already walking away. Though he’s her father, it’s her children that matter more, and she refuses to see them harmed. And if they are, it’s nothing but their blood relation that will keep him alive.

 

 

To get Brienne of Tarth as far away from Stannis as he can manage, Jon gives her the job of delivering Jaime back to King’s Landing in exchange for Sansa, who he doesn’t want in the city during the siege. “I know you wanted your revenge,” he says, because Mother explained everything to him, “but this is the only way to stop anything like this from happening again.”

Perhaps she’s just too grief stricken, but she doesn’t argue. “You’ve done well keeping Her Grace’s presence here hidden,” she says instead. “Ser Jaime was still your prisoner. What if he’s heard of her return?”

He glances of her shoulder where Robb is talking to Shireen, Stannis’ daughter, and Lady Melisandre. She deals with Stannis and his council with a rigid intensity he’s never seen before, and he understands now how she managed to control Joffrey and the Small Council for even a short time. For months she’s just been Robb, his little sister, but this is what Robyn, Queen of Westeros looks like.

“She’s a ghost story in King’s Landing from what we’ve heard,” he answers, “and she doesn’t interact with many people. I know Ser Jaime’s never seen her and if he asks about her, just say she’s some tale the men made up.”

Keeping her hidden might serve no real purpose, but he knows she doesn’t want the information spread. As of now, they’re doing a remarkably good job at avoiding that, as apparently she guessed correctly and neither Lord Bolton nor Lord Frey mentioned anything in their correspondence with Tywin Lannister, or so it seems. Both were hoping to trade her off and say they saved her, which isn’t something Jon ever thought would ever be a good thing.

“As you say, Your Grace,” Brienne says, and accepts the letter of revised peace terms he holds out to her. “I will return with Lady Sansa soon.”

She’s an honorable woman to do this even after they allied with the man she wanted to kill, and Jon believes her. Now all he can do is hope that the Lannisters don’t kill his sister first.

 

 

After Oberyn Martell and his party arrives, Tyrion goes on a walk with his wife and her direwolf by the seaside, for once without Shae behind them, but Bronn instead acting as their guard. “We received a raven from your brother, Sansa,” he tells her. “He’s trading Jaime for you.”

He wonders if the boy timed it this way or if it was simply a coincidence, but there was really no better opportunity for the trade. Right now Sansa is under Tyrion’s protection, and he can decide rather than his father what her fate is. “Will the King and Queen allow it?” she asks.

“You’re my wife now, that’s up to me,” he answers, which doesn’t sound much better. “You’re to be traded for Jaime. Should the North win the war, you stay. If they lose, you return unharmed.”

There’s a long moment of silence before she bends suddenly and hugs him for the first time. “Thank you,” she says, and he thinks of how sad it is that she’s hit the point where she’s thanking him for _allowing_ her to return.

With Jon Stark and Stannis Baratheon allied together, Tyrion doesn’t know which side will win. He doesn’t know which would be better for the Seven Kingdoms, either. What he does know, though, is that Sansa Stark doesn’t smile nearly enough and whatever the outcome, that’s something he’d like changed some time soon.

 

 

Two days before the wedding, Jaime returns, and Cersei speaks with him while Brienne and Tyrion ready Sansa Stark to leave. For a year he’s been gone, and when she kisses him again, she feels more alive than she has in a long time. This is her brother, her other half, united at last.

It’s not until after they relearn each other that they discuss what happened in their absence. “Believe me, it was nothing compared to the Stark camp,” he says when she tells him of how people keep talking of Robyn Stark even a year later. “Not many people walked past me, but I heard enough. I honestly thought she was there until Brienne said all the men were convinced her ghost had latched herself to Jon’s back. Sounds like some Northern superstition.”

“People say the same of Joffrey,” she says, because while she hates Margaery more, the ghost stories are irritating. “They say you can see her standing behind him sometimes, though I never have. Supposedly you can hear her crying for her lost child, too.”

“She was with child?”

Cersei nods. “If they had a boy, she wanted to name him after you, according to Joffrey. No doubt Margaery will want to name hers some silly Tyrell name.”

For her children, Robert never had any say in their names. She’s actually surprised Robyn discussed it. “The Wolf Queen choosing to name her son after a Lannister?” he answers. “The ghost stories are more believable than that. How is Joffrey taking to his bride-to-be?”

“He doesn’t like her, which I think is to be expected,” she says. “He wants separate rooms. And she tries so hard.” She sighs, and adds, “Has Father mentioned yet that he’s forcing me to marry _Loras Tyrell?_ ”

Jaime is appropriately appalled, and they spend the rest of the afternoon crafting ways to sabotage her new arrangement.

 

 

It’s a bad time to discuss this, but they already get little enough privacy as it is. When Sansa returns, doubtless they’ll get even less.

Now they sit together in the tent even Stannis’ men doesn’t seem to question them sharing (it’s easier to deal with nightmares in pairs, after all), and Jon watches as Robb runs her fingers through her hair, undoing her braid. “We’re going to have Sansa back in a few days,” he says, trying to find the words for it. “Hopefully not long after that we’ll take King’s Landing and be able to go home. When we do, everyone’s going to expect me to marry again.”

Immediately, she stops what she’s doing and looks over to him. “I know,” she says, and sounds tired. “The Stark line needs an heir. More than one lord is going to call for me to remarry, too, once we return.”

“Yes, most likely,” he answers. “But about that—”

“Jon, you promised.”

The look on her face is almost enough to get him to stop, somehow fearful, distrustful, and even worse resigned all at once, but as he doesn’t think this is what she had in mind when she asked for that, he continues, “Robb, I know. I’m not talking about some random Northern boy the lords would pick out for you. The North’s way’s the old way, and I’m only your half brother.”

 “Are you asking me to marry you?” she says, and he nods, words failing him out of embarrassment. “I’d like to, but after Jaime and Cersei, I don’t know how pleased people would be about a brother and sister marrying.”

Neither does he, but he’d be willing to try. “I’ve had you and lost you more than once,” he says, and pulls her closer to him. “I don’t want to go through that again. You’ve ruled before. It would make sense to have you as Queen in the North. We can convince them.”

She smiles, and kisses his cheek. “You’re right, Jon,” she says. “We’ve both done harder, and I’d be honored to be your Queen.”

 

 

Lady Margaery wears a white dress for the wedding, and Joffrey doesn’t pledge his love “from this day, until the end of his days” to her. Only half the people here attended his first wedding, and he’s sure they’ve all caught the difference.

In the audience, Tommen smiles and Mother doesn’t. He hopes Ned Stark is rotting somewhere in the Seven Hells with the realization that if it weren’t him, his daughter would be alive. If it weren’t for him, Joffrey wouldn’t have to put up with this.

When Queen Margaery smiles, the audience claps, and he regrets this marriage already.

 

 

Even with Mother gone, seeing Jon and Arya again makes Sansa feel as though she’s dreaming. Their greeting happens in the middle of a clearing, and involves a lot of tears and hugs and kisses and apologies. Her greeting with Robb, who she found out was alive from Lady Brienne, happens alone and in private.

“I thought this would be better,” Robb says after a moment where neither of them move. She’s thinner than the last time they saw each other, and she was never big to begin with. “I know you must be angry with me, and you have right to be.”

Sansa supposes she does have right to be, but more importantly she’s spent the past year thinking one sister dead and the other missing. She’s more relieved to find them both alive than anything else. “How did you escape?”

Oddly, Robb seems to flinch at the word “escape,” and Sansa wonders if her sister hadn’t hated King’s Landing as much as she imagined. “I memorized watch schedules for outside my door and in the garden,” Robb answers. “Then I cut myself to use the blood to stage a capture, destroyed my favorite dress, and killed the knight outside my door with a knife before following Arya into the tunnels under the city. I was going to use those to get you, but then Father was executed, Joffrey didn’t declare me dead immediately so everyone was looking for me, and Yoren from the Night’s Watch offered Arya safe passage. Obviously my plan didn’t work out as well as I thought.”

Her fingers  tap at her stomach, and suddenly Sansa feels ill. When she heard Robb was alive, she was hoping that was just some trick for Joffrey. “We you really—” she starts, but doesn’t need to finish, because seems more scared than anything else. “Oh. I’m sorry.”

“You don’t need to—” Robb stops, takes a breath, and continues, “I know I’m not in any position to ask favors, but please don’t mention it to anyone. Mother knew, and that was all.”

“Jon doesn’t know?” She just shakes her head. “Robb, I had a miserable time in King’s Landing, of course I did, but Joffrey never risked actually hurting me for your sake.” After the time he took Sansa out on the wall and Ser Meryn struck her face, no one lifted a hand to her for fear of leaving a mark. Joffrey had been so convinced Robb was alive (which apparently he was right about) that he wouldn’t dare do anything to Sansa and risk his wife finding out when he got her back. That wasn’t something she realized until much later.

In a more hesitant tone Sansa’s ever heard her use in her life, Robb asks, “So you’re _not_ angry with me?”

Sansa thinks she is, a little, but her relief outweighs it. In three steps, she’s across the room, and wraps her sister in a hug. And it takes a moment, but eventually she hugs back.

“I’m so sorry,” Robb says into her shoulder. “I am so, so sorry.”

For the first time in a year Sansa knows with utter certainty that these words don’t have any sort of double meaning. When she answers, “It’s all right,” she means it, because this may not be Winterfell, but at last she’s home.

 

 

Robb had long since accepted that when the Stark-Baratheon host takes King’s Landing, her brother or King Stannis will kill Joffrey. Regardless, finding out someone poisoned him at his wedding hurts. The raven says Tyrion Lannister is charged with his murder, but she doesn’t believe it—killing someone at a supposedly safe event is something Lord Tywin does, not his son. And poison seems too low even for him. Even as the men outside celebrate Joffrey’s death she hopes, privately, he didn’t suffer, even though he arguably deserved it.

Instead of Theon, it’s Sansa who finds her this time, as she hides away in the tent she and Jon still share because her brother is off discussing how this will affect changes in their battle plan. “Why?” she asks, and it’s a question Robb’s never really allowed herself to ponder before.

Now she’s forced to, though, and doesn’t like the answer she comes up with. “Because I had to.”

Sansa’s hand finds her shoulder in a silent sympathy Robb doesn’t deserve from her, and she’s never felt so low.

 

 

As he was born and raised here, a true king of King’s Landing, Joffrey is buried in the crypts of the Red Keep. Next to his remains is an empty marker for Robyn’s death, and it will stay that way until someone gives them her remains. Cersei wishes Joffrey was alive to see that happen. She wishes none of this had ever happened at all, and Ned Stark kept his meddling to himself. That someone hadn’t decided to remake Lyanna in the form of her niece.

Tommen comes to her after a talk with Father, one cat in his arms and others circling his feet like the Stark girls’ wolves. He’s a good boy who will make a good king if politics don’t rip him apart first. “Do you think it’s true?” he asks, drawing up to her side. “That they’ll reunite now in the Seven Heavens?”

Somehow, despite neither Cersei nor Robert having any particularly strong religious inclinations, Tommen learned to believe with all the childlike wonder that fits his age. “Yes,” she says, which is a lie mothers tell their sons and daughters to shelter them from the world. “Wherever they are, they must be happy.”

Unlike Tommen, Joffrey wasn’t a good boy, and he wasn’t a good king, either. Even as a mother she’ll admit that, but she loved him fiercely anyway. And if the gods really are all that people say, she hopes love is considered a redeemable enough quality to save him.

 

 

Within a week, a trial is set to take place, Margaery is to marry Tommen instead, and King’s Landing is preparing for siege. Tyrion learns all of this from Jaime in one sitting.

“If the city falls,” his brother asks when he’s done, “what do you think your wife will do?”

For some reason everyone but Cersei will do that with her, refer to him as “his wife.” Admittedly he did the same before she left King’s Landing, as once that happened he was able to rekindle his relationship with Shae, but there’s nothing wrong with the name Sansa. “Keep me alive, I imagine,” he says. “I’m the one who returned her to her brother. Whether Jon Stark agrees or not is up to debate, but I think there is a higher likelihood of me living if Stannis Baratheon takes the city than if Cersei gets her way.”

Jaime looks at him blankly. “Well, you might get your wish,” he tells Tyrion. “If you could look outside that window, you’d see the snow clouds rolling in.”

Snow, King’s Landing, and Starks are a terrible combination for all their soldiers here involved. “No.”

“Yes, unfortunately for me, possibly fortunately for you,” he says. “The Starks are always right in end. Winter is here.”

Tyrion thinks of Lady, Sansa’s huge pet (or not a pet, she would argue), and how the girl had more wolf’s blood in her than anyone here gave her credit for. If Sansa was able to keep herself alive in King’s Landing for a year, even under the protection of her late sister’s shadow, then she’s a force to be reckoned with. Robyn was as well, and Jon hasn’t lost a battle. Winter is just another advantage.

Whether the marriage is annulled or he’s forced to move to the North, Tyrion can’t help but wonder how long it will take before Westeros acknowledges Jon Stark as a proper king.

 

 

Jon kisses her soundly in their tent, dressed for war. “Don’t die,” she says, and thinks, Not you too.“You promised me a wedding that won’t end in death.”

“I’ll come back,” he says, and kisses her again. “I swear, I’ll come back to you, and Tywin Lannister will be dead before this siege is through.”

Ghost rubs himself against her side, and she smiles. When Jon smiles in return, he looks a bit like a wolf, and she knows this war is won.

 

 

While the men fight, the women sit in a small circle in the snow, watching the fire light up the night below them. None of the women from Dragonstone are used to this, and Sansa cuddles Shireen the way she would Rickon back in Winterfell, Arya pressed against her other side. Across from them sit Lady Melisandre and Robb, two unofficial queens, though Sansa overheard a conversation she shouldn’t have. It might not be long before Robb is a real queen again, and she isn’t as disgusted as she should be because Joffrey may have horrible, but Tommen and Myrcella weren’t.

At one point Lady Melisandre leans over and whispers something to Robb that Sansa can’t hear. First her sister looks shocked, but it quickly changes to relief then a smile, and Sansa doesn’t need to ask to understand. Robb’s hand is on her stomach again, and that’s all the answer she needs.

 

 

Though Jon slays Jaime Lannister in battle, the man never expecting an attack from within the streets without a breech in the gate, Lord Twin is captured and Ser Ilyn killed before he can murder all the women below. Both Lady Cersei and her father are thrown in separate cells, and young Tommen kept unchained and unharmed in his room. Someone fetches the women, though if it were up to Jon they wouldn’t come until King’s Landing was in a proper state.

Sansa reunites with Shae, who was apparently her handmaiden, and Tyrion Lannister in an unexpectedly touching manner after insisting he not be harmed because he absolutely did not kill anyone. As he’s the one who sent her back to them, Jon isn’t particularly disappointed about it, though Stannis still seems angry about his first attempt to take the city, which is understandable. What isn’t understandable is Robb’s reaction.

“I want to talk to Cersei and Tommen,” she says. “I don’t care about Lord Tywin, you can kill him while I speak with her. Please, Jon?”

How reluctant he is must be obvious because Theon says, “Just let her, Stark,” without bothering with formalities, as Stannis says, “At least one Lannister should know she’s alive. We’ll kill Lord Tywin first.”

Even with two others agreeing, Robb doesn’t take her eyes off Jon, and he relents. “She’s bound, but don’t get too close.”

“Trust me,” she says, “I have no desire to.”

This feels like a terrible idea, but if this is closure for what the woman put her through, she deserves it. At least Sansa doesn’t demand the same thing, or he might not survive the resulting worry.

“I’ll be quick about it,” Robb says, and he believes her.

 

 

Of all the people Cersei expected to walk into her cell, Robyn Stark is the last of them. “I know, I’m supposed to be dead,” the girl says when she can’t find words immediately. “Clearly I’m not.”

She looks smaller than Cersei remember, but perhaps it’s the furs still wet with melted snow that do it. As the dead queen takes her seat across from her, Cersei says, “I thought Starks were supposed to be honor to the bone.”

“They are,” Robyn says. “Unfortunately, there were complications I think you can understand.”

It’s only because of exhaustion and wine that it takes Cersei a moment to see what the girl means. “Greyjoy or your brother?”

“Jon.” The girl leans back against the wall, arms crossed. “I don’t agree with anything you’ve done, but I can understand your motives.”

This is Robyn Stark, returned from the dead, and apparently not as similar to her aunt as Cersei thought because they have more in common than they should. “Joffrey loved you more than I thought he was capable of,” she says, and it’s true. “Did you hate him the whole time?”

With a sigh, Robyn says, “He wasn’t kind to me, and hurt me very badly more than once, but there were times he was good to me too. If it weren’t for Jon, maybe I could have. As it was, I might not have loved Joffrey, but I cared for him a great deal more than you ever cared for your own husband. I thought a lot after I left that it wasn’t the right choice. Does that make you feel better?”

Cersei thinks. “I don’t know.” Now she’s too tired to lie, and she thinks Robyn is as well. “What about the child? Were you lying about that, too?”

There’s a long silence before she says, “No. I miscarried in the Riverlands. I don’t think staying would have changed that, though.”

“Will Tommen or Myrcella be harmed?”

“No. Neither Stannis nor Jon would allow it, and even if they had, I’d refuse to allow that to happen.”

If Cersei has to die, there’s that one small security at least. She hasn’t outlived her children as the prophecy said she would. No younger brother killed her, a queen only took her place for a short time. Everything she believed was wrong, and now Jaime is dead too. “I think we ruined you, Lady Stark,” she says, and she appreciates that, too. “Honor isn’t as subjective as you think it is. You’re more Lannister now than you want to believe.”

Robyn doesn’t try to deny it. “I hated you,” she tells her instead. “Genuinely hated you. I still do, but if I had my way Tommen wouldn’t be parentless. We’re sending him to Dorne with Myrcella. I don’t trust the Martells with the Lannisters particularly, but I trust the Tyrells even less.”

“Smart girl.” Cersei doesn’t trust the Tyrells either, but then again, she doesn’t trust anyone. “Why not his extended family?”

“Your brother returning to Casterly Rock once his marriage with my sister is annulled, and Stannis doesn’t want Tommen to be next in line for anything,” Robyn answers, and one of the worst results of this is that Tyrion is now walking free. “And my brother imprisoned a large number of your cousins and sent them to the Wall. I barely know a thing about any of them, and I just want Tommen somewhere I know he’ll be safe.”

No, Tyrion walking free is not the worst, Cersei decides. It’s that she still hates Robyn Stark less than she does Margaery Tyrell. Maybe this is what people call empathy because she understands motives, too. It’s just a shame for all of them that Robert needed to get Joffrey involved.

Someone raps on the door. “It’s time, Your Grace.”

Cersei doesn’t know which one the guard’s referring to. She supposes it doesn’t matter. As Robyn stands, she asks one last question. “Why Jaime?”

“He’s Joffrey’s father, not Robert,” the girl says, “and I would _never_ name my child Tywin.”

Then she leaves, and doesn’t join them for the execution. Cersei dies surrounded by judgmental eyes, wondering if Tommen was right and she’ll be with oldest son and brother again.

 

 

Robb doesn’t want to be there for Cersei’s excecution, even though as future Queen in the North she probably should be. Instead she finds Tommen, and hopes the boy as it in him to forgive her.

Just her luck, Margaery Tyrell is with him, which Stannis’ guard thankfully warned her of before entering. Tommen’s face lights up with a child’s ignorance when he sees her despite the red tearfulness of his eyes, and Robb nearly falls backwards when he throws himself at her. “You’re alive!” he says, burying his face in his shoulder and squeezing her tight around the middle. “Joffrey was right.”

This is Tommen, little Tommen who was too young to be King, and she thinks it’s probably one small kindness that they saved him from the Iron Throne. “Of course he was,” she says, and runs her fingers lightly through his hair before looking up to Margaery, who isn’t hiding her shock. “I want to speak with him alone. Sansa should be in the throne room with my brother and sister and if you want to find her.”

The relief on the other girl’s face is just as obvious. So at least that friendship wasn’t faked, then. “She’s safe?” Robb nods, and Margaery removes a sleeping cat from her lap. “Will the guard outside allow me to leave?”

“I already told him you had my permission.” After she’s gone, Robb kisses the top of Tommen’s head and detaches him. “Hello. I’m very sorry about—everything.”

It sounds insincere, even to her, but he doesn’t seem to realize. “Are Mother and Uncle Jaime really going to die?” he asks. “Is there anything you can do to stop it?”

That’s the question she dreaded. For the most part, she really does want Cersei to pay for her crimes, but at the same time, she cares a lot for this boy and his sister. Their House name forced them to be involved when they shouldn’t have been. Both deserved better than what they got. “No, unfortunately. I’m a Northerner, and that’s its own country now,” she answers. “I don’t have much say on what Stannis does. Your uncle Tyrion will live, though, and you’re to be sent to your sister. Winter is here now, Tommen. There’s no better place than Dorne.”

“Oh.” His shoulders slump. He and Myrcella will always hate Stannis, most likely, but hopefully they won’t lead to another rebellion because the North and Westeros are still allied in war as well as trade. Outside of decision making policies, not much in their relationship with each other has changed. “What happened to you, Robyn?”

His nails are chewed on, short and cracked through a habit Cersei had been trying to break him of. He’s worried, and he has right to be. Somewhere in a different part of the Red Keep, his grandfather and mother have both been killed. “A lot of very bad things,” she says, because it’s true, and Tommen’s just a child who wouldn’t understand even if she did have time to explain.

“Will you be all right?” he says. “Will my uncle kill you, too?”

“No, no, my older brother has me under his protection,” she says, and maybe it’s a good thing Joffrey isn’t here because this is hard enough. “I need to find him. Stay here until someone comes to fetch you.  You won’t be harmed by anyone, I swear it. And you’re a brave boy, Tommen. Whatever happens, you’ll make it through.”

Again, Tommen hugs her, and from his sniffle, she knows he’s about to cry, which is awful because she’s barely keeping herself together as it is. “Will I ever see you again?”

“Likely not, but you can always send a raven.”

Then he really does start crying, and it takes more willpower than she’d like to admit to stop herself from doing the same. He and Myrcella didn’t deserve this. They deserve a lot of things, and all of them better than this.

They exchange goodbyes, and Robb finds her family and Stannis’ in the Sept of Baelor, and the bodies have already been cleared away, though the blood stains are there as well as a clump of golden hair. Both she and Cersei had been married here, and look at what good it’s brought them now.

 

 

Before the Northerners leave, Jon and Stannis make their terms official.

“You can continue sending criminals to the Wall, if you’d like,” Jon says, because ultimately they haven’t changed their relationship much. The only real difference is that Stannis doesn’t have any say in the North’s domestic politics. “It’s better than your prisons overflowing.”

“Send a Night’s Watch recruiter down every once in a while,” Stannis answers. “With winter here, I think that’s the best solution for both of us.”

They should have gone to him first rather than Renly. It would have saved them a lot of time, a lot of men, and Mother would still be here. “We’re leaving in the morning, Your Grace,” Jon says. “Perhaps when winter’s over, we’ll see each other again.”

Stannis agrees, says his daughter certainly wouldn’t object to it, and they sign the bottom of the treaty. Finally the war is over, and Jon can go home.

 

 

Because of the power vacuum left by the Lannisters and Renly Baratheon, as well as the suspicious death of Lysa Arryn, Westeros’ Great Houses are rearranged. The North now stretches down to the Trident, as those lands had been annexed during the war, and Edmure Tully is given lordship over the Eyrie and remaining Riverlands. The Stormlands are split between House Baratheon and House Tyrell, as Renly had no heirs, and Ser Davos’ family gains control of lordship over Dragonstone. The Westerlands stay under Lannister control, with Tyrion as Lord of Casterly Rock now that his marriage with Sansa has been legally annulled. When Lord Balon dies, the lands will pass to his daughter or a different heir, because Theon’s given up his claims to wed Sansa “so she won’t have to leave Winterfell again,” which she takes no real issue with. For the first generation as separate kingdoms, House Stark isn’t to marry anyone from Westeros.

With Theon no longer an option for Robb, the lords are quick to offer up their sons for her as they offer up their daughters for Jon. In the end, he isn’t the one who suggests they get instead, though Lord Umber clearly intends it to be a joke. “We’ve been calling Lady Robyn a queen long enough,” he says. “Why don’t you just marry her, Your Grace?”

Half the lords laugh, and the other half looks as though they’re honestly considering it, which gives Jon hope that maybe this isn’t such a terrible idea after all. “Well, you are only half-siblings, and it’s a single generation,” Theon says, and he’s smirking. “It can’t be any worse than Westeros’ history of marrying cousins.”

Lord Karstark says, “We’ve all got sons and daughters around their age. It’s not as though the North is lacking in choices.”

Before Jon can say anything, an argument breaks out that he isn’t included in, and opinions are split nearly evenly with many citing “the North’s way’s the old way.” He wonders what Mother would say, or Father, and how their siblings will react. “Winter is here,” Lady Mormont says. “We need a strong queen as much as a strong king. I’d like to see one of my daughters at your side, Your Grace, but the Lady Robyn has ruled a country before.”

That’s a point no one can argue. “I’ll think on it, My Lords,” he says, as readily agreeing won’t look good, and watches as Theon rolls his eyes. They’re about to be related through marriage. Winter really does bring strange things.

In a month’s time, they’ll be home. From the looks of it, Jon and Robb will be able to marry with the lords’ acceptance, and suddenly he isn’t so afraid of having to rule.

 

 

Like Sansa, Bran and Rickon hadn’t known for certain their sister was alive for a year, or that Arya was safe. Their party returns late at night, but by the time they reach the front hall, their brothers are downstairs, Bran on an unfamiliar woman’s shoulders.

As Sansa picks him up, Rickon says, “That’s not fair. How come you got even _taller?_ ”

“How can you be asking me that?” she answers, and feels something inside her thaw at the sight of his dimpled smile. “Just look at you!”

Jon takes Bran from Osha, and he seems to have grown the most overall and his hair is in desperate need of a sheer. Then again, all of them but Arya are. “I _knew_ you weren’t dead,” he says to Robb. “I tried to tell Maester Luwin, but he didn’t believe me. Are you really King now, Jon?”

Arya says, “Yes, he is, and because lords couldn’t let anyone else’s daughter marry Jon, Robb’s going to be Queen.”

“I said we were going to keep that until morning!” Jon says, and Robb just looks horrified, but Bran’s too tired and Rickon too young to understand they’re talking marriage, not just who wears the crown. And after what the Lannisters put her through, it should probably bother Sansa more than it does, but she just can’t find it in her. She wants her family together, and this way Robb won’t be sent away again. None of them will be.

In King’s Landing, she was compared to their aunt Lyanna, but now she’s set to marry their brother, and Sansa wonders when she started thinking of that as the happier ending.

 

 

Both weddings take place on the same day, outside the heart tree with few guests before winter can take its hold. There’s snow to Jon’s ankles, and decorating Robb’s hair, and this dress is just as simple as her first one, but she’s no less beautiful for it.

“Our Queen in the North,” he says with a grin happier than he’s had in a while, and fits her crown on top her head.

The winter will be long, but they’re Starks, and they will endure.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For the record, I know this chapter is sort of weirder than the rest. I basically wrote all of this in increments of one and four in the morning over the course of about five days, so I completely exhausted the whole time.

**Author's Note:**

> Basically, I had this conversation with a friend once about Joffrey that was really long and I'm not going to get into it, but Robb, as the oldest daughter, gets married in this. Unlike Sansa, she fits all the requirements for marriage at the time, too. So Joffrey's his usual cruel, blatantly evil self, but like in a lot of abusive relationships, he actually does care about her. It just doesn't stop him from hurting her (or her family). It just made the dynamic less repetitive. 
> 
> Also, this chapter was very clearly written all in Robb's point of view. Next chapter is basically written in everyone's point of view but hers. Things that seem sort of open ended now will be explained more then. 
> 
> (oh, and I totally know none of this would ever work on show/in the books)


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